Here’s a quick and flexible way to emulate the look of fog in the background of an image. I recently used this technique in the visualization of the Agami House in Yaffo. It’s true it might not look real enough but for most cases this really looks good enough and you have the added bonus of fast render and flexible edit inside Photoshop if the client ask for tweaks.
Adding the fog layer
You’ll start with the original render without any fog in it as you see below
On top of this image you’ll add the fog layer – Full frame of pure white color masked out by the VRayZDepth render pass.
If you need to adjust the fog location relative to the camera you can play with the ZDepth image levels, instead of re-rendering the image after changing the VRayZDepth parameters, This way you can quicky move the fog in and out as i did in the example below.
But this is not that good since the beautiful sky is now covered with white color. In order to get this right, and actually more true to the way fog behaves in reality, you need to change the pure white layer to a gradient with pure white at the bottom that shifts to transparency as you move up… this way the fog will be limited to near ground areas.
You can see above the end result with the fog layer at 100%. You can decrease the impact of this layer to fine tune the general effect, or even mask out specific areas to emphasize exactly what you like.
So, i hope this information was helpful for you in some way. It is my personal take on the subject and if you do things differently and have useful insights please join in and share by commenting below.
If you liked this article, and want to be notified when new posts like this are being published, please consider subscribing to the blog via one or more of the options below. You can also share with others using the Share button.
- RSS – Get updates as posts get publish.
- Email Newsletter – Periodic updates plus more
- Twitter – Updates about the blog and other things too.
3 Comments
Trackbacks
- A Quick Trick for Adding Fog to a Scene | VizWorld.com
- 3D Tool Ticker – Januar 2010 «
- Ronen Bekerman’s 3D tutorial on adding Fog using VRayZDepth and Photoshop | JG3D
Leave a Reply
Recent Posts
GH House Challenge Final Submission
03/09/2010 • The 15th of March is near and as mentioned before the final images submission forms for the GH House Challenge...Read More
The Trojan House by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects
03/04/2010 • I love wood facade houses, and this refurbishment project by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects is a fine example. The textures...Read More
Hair & Fur in 3D Studio Max
03/01/2010 • Following a great thread in the finished works section of the forums, pixela was very kind to send me a...Read More
Amazing Timelapse Film, “Sky” by Philip Bloom
02/24/2010 • An amazing new timelapse film by Philp Bloom. Filmed in Dubai over 5 days and nights using a Canon 7D,...Read More
















Thanks Ronen for the tutorial… glad you put it on your own web. I like the color saturation that makes the image very rich.
Btw can i link this from my website?
Thanks Galaites! Sure you can.
thank you my friend