
While the above method is simple and useful, many times you find that your shot has an animated or tracked camera. Maya's Viewport 2.0 will also provide you with a reasonable preview of your choice seen below. Using this value as the Focus Distance will assure this location is in focus and sharp. This can be found under the following menu: Display > Heads Up Display > Object DetailsĪbove you can see that the selected geometry is 63.974 units from the camera. The simplest is to use the Object Details selection in Maya to display the selected object's distance from the camera. Using Maya you have a few options to drive your focal plane, or the area you want to be in focus. This is helpful to create incredibly thin slices of focus artificially.

Focus Distance: The distance to the object or location you want in-focus (sharp) measured in scene grid units.Since this is per-camera you should be careful you have it enabled on the render camera.

To begin using DOF in Maya you are required to enable it in the camera attributes. The render cost of depth of field can be high as it generates noise that needs many more samples to converge.
