User manual

© Next Limit Technologies 2010
Maxwell Render 2.5 User Manual
Chapter 12. Maxwell Studio | 112
control the shape of the diaphragm aperture (circular or polygonal), the number of
the blades and its angle.
• Rotary Disk Shutter: Control the Shutter Angle (which controls the proportion of
time that the lm is exposed to light during each frame interval) and the Frame Rate
(number of frames per second). Both concepts are related to the motion blur, or
blurred perception of objects in motion.
• Z-clip Planes: Z-clip planes allow you to cut away parts of the geometry in a
render by specifying the near and far clipping planes of the camera. This enables
you for example to move the camera outside a room, and cut away the wall facing
the camera so you can still get a render as if the wall did not exist, although
the actual render will take the wall into account and produce proper lighting.
The Z-clip planes can be previewed either by looking through the camera in the
viewport (you will see the objects being clipped as you move the Z-clip planes) or
looking in a perspective view which will show the red (near plane) and blue (far plane)
rectangles.
• Shift Lens: The Shift lens functionality of the Maxwell camera allows you to shift the
lens of the camera in order to move the image that falls on the virtual lm plane up/
down or left/ right. This is useful for architectural type renders where you want to
keep some lines of the building parallel, making a two-point perspective. To properly
use Shift Lens, the camera and camera target need to be at the same height, that is,
the camera needs to be perfectly level, just like a real world shift lens/ camera.
12.04.03 Focusing the camera
Maxwell Studio has two functions - “Auto focus” and “Focus to” – designed to help you
to control the focus of the camera. You can nd these options by right-clicking in the
viewport.
F.03 Focusing the camera
Auto focus
Automatically focus on the target point (what the focus indicator sees in the viewport).
You can also press the F key to auto focus. The camera focus indicator must be over an
object for the auto focus to work correctly. In addition, for the Auto focus and Focus to
options to work correctly, make sure you are not in Bounding Box or Wireframe shading
modes.
Focus to
Choose this option and then click on any object in the viewport. The clicked object will be
in focus. Alternatively, you can use the Focal Distance feature from the Camera Parameters
panel to manually adjust the focus. Remember that the camera target represents the point
where the image will be in complete focus. You can use a perspective viewport to see
where the camera target is when making adjustments to the Focal Distance.