In this tutorial you will learn how to use the Depth of Field in Mental Ray, using the camera’s depth of field.

The depth of field basically allows you to focus a single target on the camera while objects that are closer of further from the camera’s target will appear gradually less and less focused.

In this scene we are just using some spheres, with a target area photometric light, and then, let’s go for the camera settings.

In this first image from the top view port you can see where the camera target is:

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Now we are going to set the camera parameters so we can have the Depth of Field Effect. Select the camera, and go to its properties menu. Go down a bit until you find Multi Pass Effect. Check the Enable Box and choose Depth of Field(Mental Ray). The depth of field parameters will appear under the Multi Pass Effect Box.

Choose 12.0 as the f-stop value.

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Now we are going to make a test render to see how it goes.

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As you can the, the balls that are further from the target look more blurry than the one that is targeted. Now let’s try with a smaller value for the f-stop, set it to 5.0

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Now the balls that aren’t targeted are much more blurred than the target. Another thing you can do is change your target to see how it goes. Choosing the second last ball, you will see that the balls that are closer to the camera are blurred, creating a perfect depth of field effect.

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That’s it, very simple, but great results, i did low quality renders just for the understanding, but if you go for more quality it will look like a realistic depth of field! Good luck and see ya next time!