Possible to set rendering/camera clipping distance?

AlephGates

Is possible to set a rendering/clipping/camera distance for renders? In Blender there are clipping planes for near and far distances. For instance, I am wanting to render the front half of a hair item and for the back of the hair to not render or be invisible/Transparent. I currently have a colored plane (white in attached image) going through the hair item and selecting out the color in Gimp to create a tranparency of the hair without the back of the hair. It doesn't work very well unless I make the background white too. The idea is to set up a catelog of characters and hair etc and then just render each hair and character item once. I can combine them in a 2d with layers etc (python) and be able to go through a ton of combination quickly for prototyping/conceptualizing without having to setup and render each combination of hair and character (and other styling options) individually. If I can render the hair as a transparency without the back of the hair rendering then I don't have to create a mask/selection in Gimp and delete the back of the hair. I hope that makes sense (?).

markusmatern

When rendering in IRAY you could try using a section plane:

In DAZ go to the  Create  → New Iray Section Plane Node

This cuts your scene in half one half is rendered, the other half not.

You can add multiple in one scene. Using two and rotating one 180° you can set up what you want

Here is a quick tutorial on DeviantArt

 

There is also a product for this: Camera Cutaway

AlephGates

MarkusMatern Thank you so much! This is perfect! You just made my day.

markusmatern

Glad it worked out four you! I tinkered a bit and think this is a great idea for checking out hair for a character.

I did the following for these mannequins

1. Added a Genesis 8 to the scene and moved her to -30 in X
2. Select it in the Scene tab
3. Used the menu Create → New node instance and added a second lightweight clone to the scene using Apply Default Settings
   Optionallay name it Clone for Name and Label
4. Move the Clone to +30 in X and rotate it 180° in Y
   Check the Y Translate of the Original and if it is not 0 apply it also to the Clone
5. Add a default camera to the scene and move it to X = 0; Y = 187; Z = 390
   Set rotations to X = -13.3; Y = 0; Z = 0
6. Parent the camera to the head bone of the Genesis figure using the option Parent in place
   This makes sure when rendering characters with different heights, that their head is always at the same spot!
7. Use the pose controls with a value of Arms Up-Down set to -80%
8. Maybe tweak the hands to make them look more natural
9. When preparing for the forum add some clothes
10. Save as a scene and call it Gensis8 Base
11. For a new character just open the default scene, select the original Genesis and apply the new character
    Make sure what the scale setting is for the original character and apply it to the Clone
12. Save under a different name

Prepare a scene for hair

1. Load your initial Genesis8 default scene
2. Unparent the camera
3. Delete the Genesis figure and the clone
4. Add a small primitive to the scene and make it invisible for the render
   I used a sphere with 15cm diameter
   Move the object to -30 in X as you did with the original figure above
5. Add a node instance of your primitive as above and move it to 30 in X and rotate it 180° in Y
6. Add a section plane as described above and call it front
   Optionally add a second section plane 180° rotated and call it back
7. Save as your hair default scene
8. Add some hair by parenting it to the primitive object
   You should see it twice
9. Save under the hair name front with the front section plane visible
10. Save under the hair name back with the back section plane visible

Render the character and the front hair, optionally the back hair

Combine the results in your favourite image editor that supports layers. The hair should be in the right place!
Gina with Matilda hair front:

Some hairs need the additional back version enabled to look right. You have three layers in total. Back hair, character and front hair.

Genesis 81 with Low Updo hair front and back on the left; MSOGina with Low Updo hair front only on the right:

AlephGates

Thank you for posting this too! This is exactly what I was going for, but I am not that great with Daz so it is educational for me to see how one goes about doing this that is much more experienced than me.

markusmatern

Your are most welcome! Hope you get the result you were expecting!