using the Pz in mantra to render the Depth pass, I am wondering how do you control the distance of the depth pass? Cause right now I am getting pure white renders, which means I somehow need to scale down the distance that the camera is using.

Any hints of where I can control this?

the distance is correct. the render looks pure white because your objects are farther than 1 unit (meter) away. at the bottom of mplay or the render view their are color correction options including 2 ‘auto’ correct buttons to the right that will try and fit your image to a viewable, 0 - 1 range. you dont want to change the pixels themselves though as they are giving you the correct information.

i believe peter quint has a good tutorial on depth passes.

why yes he does!

I had this problem all day yesterday. So you a few options.

In houdinis compisiting operator. read in your file add a dof node switch your image to M then add defocus node (connect dof to mask input of defocus) In defoucus node click per pixel defocus then go to Mask tab: switch operator mask to “Mask Input” “M”. From there you can go back to the dofnode and start playing with your settings.

IF you ues after effects take your Zdepth pass and ad a 3dextractor effect. Set your W&B to extremly low values like… .01-1. and just play with it until you get what you like.

You can do it in nuke but I haven't had the chance to mess with it yet…

good luck

PQTUT: http://vimeo.com/6580446 [vimeo.com]

oh one more thing use .exr