Depth Of Field and Alpha Channel.

[Superpositivo]

Hi, friends!

Problem:

In my scene I have some trees, and these trees are just planes with a texture with alpha channel.
DOF materials, shaders, or whatever, seems not to recognize the alpha channel, and whatever I tried it seems it doesn't work correctly and so, it sees the actual shape of the plane, instead of the tree.

QUESTION:

Is there a way to have the tree in DOF with alpha channel?...

[FXDude]

What renderer are you using? do you see any DOF through any transparent surface? (without alpha)

[Superpositivo]

Hi!

Mental Ray.

I tried everything: Camera Lens Shader, Change Range shader, Pass Depth, Volume Shader. Nothing.....

I saw a collegue on Maya he did it using Fog inside a cube volume, but to me it seems not the best solution....

[Superpositivo]

SOLVED!

A simple Card Opacity node did the job.

Of course for every plane with a texture with Alpha Channel, a new DoF Material is needed, and the Scalar Change Range node is duplicated.
So I can suggest to constrain the planes Scalar Change Range parameters to the Scalar Change Range parameters used for all the other objects with no Alpha Channel texture via expression (in Softimage just simply drag the parameter icon to the costrainer parameter. But still better, do it once, then duplicate that material to have already the expressions on it) to have an easier control for the depth of every object on just one panel.

That's the way I found. If there's a better way (like not to be force to connect parameters), please, share it.

CIAO!..