Depth of Field Pass help

[l3373d]

For the life of me I cannot get a proper z-Depth pass from Maya. i'd like to know the best way to do it without using Mayas new render pass system but rather with traditional render layers. Many tutorials I've found seem to be vague or missing an important step when using luminance depth or the camera depth preset. Really the most step by step instruction for getting a good pass (targa) would be much appreciated! Also, my camera is animated so this can't be for a single frame or image. Thanks.

[joojaa]

Best is not defined.

Well that really depends on your definition of a proper depth pass! Usually tough a PROPER depth pass is the one maya wirtes to aiff file when you under camera outout options chek depth map.

[amartins]

Maya/mental ray will render out a separate file in the render data folder - make sure you're checking that folder for the depth pass.  Also, mental ray uses the camera's min/max distance to calculate the depth pass.  Render passes work using an .exr file.  You can take that 1 file and have 20 different passes, but you have to extract the different passes in a comp package like nuke or after effects.  After effects can only extract the passes using the OpenEXR plugin - from there you can take advantage of the depth, shadow, ambient etc passes and layer them accordingly.  Yoo can use AE's lens blur and reference the depth pass that was extracted from the exr.  It's a pain but gives you more control if you want to animate DOF.  Hope that helped...