In this third episode of a nine-part series dedicated to Atmospheric Perspective in Compositing in Blender 4.1, we will discuss the information coming from the Depth channel of Render Layers and how to handle it to create various effects.
Video Transcript
In this third episode of a nine-part series dedicated to Atmospheric Perspective in Compositing in Blender 4.1, we will discuss the information coming from the Depth channel of Render Layers and how to handle it to create various effects.
In the previous episode, we activated the Environment Render Pass and adjusted the Clipping End distance appropriately.
Let's proceed with rendering and then switch to a Compositor editor to move on to the post-production process.
As mentioned in previous episodes, the Depth output is available by default in the Render Layers node.
To analyze it, we can connect it to a Reroute node, which is then connected to both the Composite and Viewer nodes.
This allows us to analyze the information in the backdrop of the editor.
In this case, we can see the outlines of the mountains becoming lighter as the distance increases.
However, in some cases, the Depth channel returns masks that are not in the correct range.
Actually, even this mask is not in the correct range because objects in the foreground should appear black, and overall, the mask is too bright, so many landscape details are not visible.
To make this information easier to read and handle, let's introduce a Normalize node from the Utilities group into the setup.
This node has the effect of bringing all the values it receives in input into the range from 0 to 1.
The effect is immediately visible in our case as well, as the foreground elements now appear black.
The information obtained in this way is therefore a mask, which can be used as it is or inverted to control the various effects that we will implement in the upcoming episodes.