Turning on Depth of Field

Motion allows us to create some very realistic camera effects by enabling a property called Depth of Field. With it, we can choose an object we want to focus on by using its Z Position to guide us, in turn blurring other layers around it. Let's see how we can use it.

Getting ready

From this chapter's exercise files, double-click the 10_09 project. Press the Space bar to play back the project. You may notice the project does not play in real time. You can try to adjust the quality and resolution temporarily to allow the project to play back faster. The project consists of a camera and a few lights interacting with a floor and two text layers. Select each text layer and pay attention to its Z Position value in the Properties tab of the Inspector. We want to enable Depth of Field for our project, so that only the text in the foreground is in focus. We will then animate the focus by keyframing the Offset value.

How to do it...

Let's make sure our project is set up properly...