I’ve always had issues with jaggy edges on objects when I’m using DOF with my composited 3d renders. I’ve tried with embedded DOF from RPF files and as a separate render pass, and get the same results.
Does anyone know a workaround or a better way of using DOF information so I don’t get these jaggy edges?
zdepth passes by default don’t get antialiased. If they did, they wouldn’t look right, where white pixels (close object) were next to black pixels (far object) the dof effect would get confused by the resulting gray from the blending of the two colored pixels. You need to do some study into coverage passes, pre and post multiplication, and how they effect compositing. I’d recommend the following gnomon video, its very good:
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/431/Multi-Pass-Compositing
Thanks for the help. Yeah, it’s certainly the antialiasing. I’ve found that in 3dsMax, you have to render out the z-depth as a seperate pass and check on “enable filtering”. That will give you aliased edges on the z-depth, but as mentioned, you lose true accuracy in the DOF due to the blurred edges. On a side note, RPF’s and EXR’s aren’t letting me get aliased edges with the embedded z-depth pass.
I’m trying to learn as I go, and as mentioned, I have some studying to do! 
I’ll check into the gnomon DVD. Thanks for the link!
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