Atmospheric haze & Depth Map

What you'll learn to do

Step 1 : Create your scene in DAZ

Step 2 : render your scene as usual

Step 3 : Set up canvases in DAZ to render a depth map

In your render settings, select the advanced tab

Then the Canvases tab

Add a new canvas

Select the "depth" type

And here's what you get

Render as usual

Step 4 : Getting the depth map in photoshop

Save that very white render somewhere

To the path you saved your render in, a folder has been created with your canvases

And inside... a mysterious .exr file

Open it in photoshop

Choose "as transparency"

Step 5 : Making the depth map visible

What you'll get is a very white image

Choose image > mode > 8 Bits/Channel

Choose Merge

... equalize histogram

Hello you beautiful depth map !

Step 6 : bring the depth map to your final render

Copy your depth map...

... And paste it on top of your initial render

Now, we're ready to play !

You can use this map in many ways. Basically, it's an opacity mask. You can use it for an atmospheric haze, for a progressive blur, to hide and show elements, for artistic purposes...

Basically, it adds a layer of depth to anything.

So let's try an atmospheric haze.

Step 7 : Use the depth map to make an Atmospheric haze

create anoter layer on top of everything. Fill it with a color.

Add a layer mask to it

Alt+left click on your newly created layer mask to make it the active object

And paste your depth map to it

Click on the top layer again to quit the layer mask's edition and...

OooOOoOoh ! Depth !

Move your depth blue layer and associate it with the render with CTRL+ALT+G

Now you can play with levels on the layer mask to make it more or less pronounced. Hue staturation to play with the color, etc...

Congratulations : You've created depth !

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