KeyShot Quick Tip - Creating Custom Bokeh

what's going on everyone welcome to another keyshot quick tip in this video we'll be talking about boca arguably one of the most talked about subjects in photography and today we'll be looking at how you can create custom bokeh effects right here in keyshot if you're at all familiar with photography own a camera or have spent a little too much time browsing social media you have undoubtedly crossed paths with the infamous buttery smooth background blur that photographers refer to as bokeh generally this effect is particularly noticeable in portrait and product photography where the subject of the photograph is separated from its background using a low f-stop lens this causes the subject to be sharp and visible while the background lights reflections and highlights appear out of focus it is here that the shape of the lens and the number of blades in its diaphragm determine how these background elements render while traditionally bokeh appears as a round or hexagonal shape there are ways to create custom bokeh in any shape you desire and luckily for us recreating the effect in key shot is incredibly easy to get started you're going to want to place your subject in the forefront of your scene and light it accordingly at this point i would consider choosing a darker environment color in order to best highlight the bokeh effect you're creating however if you are working with a daytime or brightly lit scene you can still achieve a bokeh effect with the same principles from this point i'm going to make a simple circular bokeh effect by adding a piece of sphere geometry through the add geometry flyout in the edit menu i'll then position my geometry somewhere behind my subject in the scene and apply an emissive light material to create the light that will be out of focus in this case i'm using a warm emissive light because most non-led lights tend to have warmer tones i'll then adjust my camera to focus on my subject move the lit sphere into a position that is visible and enable depth of field to both dial in how much f-stop i need and determine if i need to move my lit sphere further into the background if you find that there isn't enough focus differentiation between your subject and the background light simply move your lit geometry further away from the subject in the foreground once you're happy with the effect the depth of field is creating it's now time to put your creativity to work at this point i duplicate the same sphere over and over and move the duplicate spheres into new positions while doing this i also take the opportunity to adjust each sphere's scale to both add some variety to the scene as well as create the illusion of depth once i'm satisfied with the placement of my background lights i like to select a few individually and adjust their light intensity this once again adds a little bit more variety and depth to the scene while adding realism and better simulating how the effect would be rendered through an actual camera lens now the method i just described is a simple and highly flexible method for creating bokeh of different shapes and sizes but it does involve creating geometry and modeling if you want to use shapes outside of what exists in keyshot another method to create custom bokeh without modeling geometry would be to create a bokeh filter in real world photography bokeh filters are typically applied over the camera's lens to create a shape that light will pass through in keyshot you can achieve the same thing by creating a boca filter using a plane in front of your camera to do this you'll first need to create the shape you'd like to work with essentially you'll need to create an image in your program of choice where the shape you'd like to use as a filter will be white and centered on a black background similar to the image i've created which you can see on the screen you'll then want to create a plane and key shot where your image can be applied and then move that plane in front of your camera notice on the screen i have the camera view open on the left side of my program window so i can get a better idea of how my bokeh filter is being set up while also being able to see the effect in my real-time view from here i'll locate the image i've created then drag and drop it onto my plane's opacity and color inputs in my textures sub-tab i'll change my opacity mapping mode to inverse color and then make sure i've deselected the repeat vertical repeat horizontal and two-sided mapping options this should leave me with a cut out of my shape directly in the center of the plane and now we have our completed boca filter at this point you'll want to adjust the plane and camera so that your filter overlaps about one-fifth of your real-time view and then enable depth of field to create your bokeh effect once you have your depth of field settings dialed in you'll likely notice that the scene has some heavy vignetting and is overall underexposed you'll then need to adjust your exposure and contrast settings in your image tab and brightness of your hdri lighting to compensate for the under exposure caused by your new filter at this point you should have a properly exposed scene with custom shaped bokeh of your choosing before i go there are a couple things i'd like to mention that should help streamline your experience with keyshot boca filters one don't be afraid to use low f-stop numbers typically i found that f-stops over one tend to distort the shape of your bokeh effect while f-stops below one tend to create a more uniform shape two using too many light sources with your bokeh filter will cause your bokeh shapes to overlap and lose much of their sharpness and three the size and brightness of your light sources will help determine how sharp and visible your bokeh effects appear typically smaller brighter light sources produce the sharpest effects hopefully these two methods i've shown you for creating custom bokeh will help you on your future keyshot projects and remember that literally any shape can be used to create your bokeh effects so don't feel limited to only using keyshot's geometry feel free to experiment and explore and to create unique and unexpected compositions thanks for watching this keyshot quick tip if you're interested in more useful key shot content hit that subscribe button and get notified as soon as new videos hit the channel don't forget to let us know your thoughts on this tutorial in the comment section below and if you found this video useful give it a like and share with your friends [Music] [Music]

Channel: KeyShot

Views: 7,956

Keywords: keyshot, cg, 3d rendering, 3d animation, engineering, product design, marketing

Id: QSLhi88Gogg

Length: 6min 46sec (406 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021