Advanced Render Settings 2 – Tutorial 01

BEOK2010
This tutorial will show how to use Depth of Field, remove colors to make grayscale renders (HSV modification) and
add Glowing in postwork, using an Alpha MAT pass.

Scripts and application used: Advanced Render Settings 2, Advanced Scene Management, Photoshop.

Step 1. Create your scene

I'm using a nice little borg, which has some glowing materials.
Step 2. HSV modification
In this case I want to remove the colors from the Borg, we can achieve this by setting the saturation of the texture
maps to 0. Of course we do not want to change the color of the glow. So this is what you can do.

Open the Advanced Scene Management and follow these steps.

At step five, it will open a dialog asking if you wish to apply the HSV settings to the lights. Choose Yes.
Step 3 – Depth of Field
Now, I want to add some 'depth' to the scene, focusing the camera on the Borg's head.

Open the Advanced Render Settings 2 and follow these steps:

For step 2, right click to open the pop-up menu:

Select Set focus on actor… and browse for the figure's head. For this render, I used a low value for FStop: 1.0
Result:
Step 4 – Add glowing red light.
I want to have more control over the glowing effect – in fact, I want to have a glowing effect. This will be done in
postwork using an Alpha MAT pass and Photoshop.

Using Advanced Render Settings, render an Alpha MAT pass with only the Glow materials:

At step 1, if the Alpha MAT pass wasn't already used, it will automatically open the material selection dialog. If it is
not opening, right click alpha MAT to open it.

Note: Why didn't I used the Ambient Pass ? Mainly because the figure's default materials is using the ambient
channel for every materials… If this is not the case and only the glowing materials are using the ambient channel,
you should use the Ambient Pass instead of the Alpha MAT pass.
Alpha MAT pass result:

Photoshop
First step in Photoshop is to apply some color to the Alpha MAT pass. This
is done by multiplying the Alpha MAT pass over a color layer.

1. Open Photoshop and load the main render.

2. Add an empty layer and fill it with a solid red color.
3. Load the created Alpha MAT pass in a new layer and set it to
Multiply.
 4. Merge the Alpha MAT pass with the Red Color (Photoshop: Ctrl+E).
Set the resulting layer to Screen.

Next step is to create the glowing effect: this is done using the Gaussian Filter
on duplicate layers.

1. With the resulting layer (Alpha MAT + Red Color) selected, apply a
Gaussian Blur (FIlter – Blur – Gaussian Blur).
2. Duplicate the Alpha MAT layer and apply again the Gaussian Blur (or
hit Ctrl+F).
3. Duplicate again the last layer and apply the filter once more. This will
increase the glowing effect.
4. Do these until you have the effect wanted.
You're done! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! For question, please use the forum at www.runtimedna.com or send
me an email at basilgass@gmail.com