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As far as things such as Focal Length, Sensor Size, etc., what are the ideal camera settings in blender that most closely approximate the human eye? Right now, everything in my scene seems like it is way smaller than it should be at the default settings. I believe this is because the defaults assume a scale of 1BU = 1cm or 1mm, whereas I am using a scale of 1BU = 1 meter. I am doing so largely because I will be constructing large indoor and outdoor scenes (including an entire city) where working with a scale of 1cm or 1mm would be too unwieldy, and possibly run into internal software limits.

Now, I realize that because blender's camera uses monocular imaging instead of binocular imaging (like the human eye) it cannot perfectly match how a human would view the scene. However, I'm not looking for perfection: I'm looking for a close approximation that is "good enough".

Zauberin Stardreamer
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  • Could you add some visual reference on the mismatch you noticed? – stacker Apr 09 '14 at 19:10
  • Yeah, on this render. Looking at it, I feel like I'm looking at a miniature set, rather than some full-size buildings. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1x2WUEE4G4c/U0We-GrwW6I/AAAAAAAAD8g/hY2_GQFMbds/s0/PromenadeDistrict_Render9.png – Zauberin Stardreamer Apr 09 '14 at 19:28

3 Answers3

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The default in Blender assumes 1 Blender unit = 1 meter, so you're actually on the right track there.

As for the question regarding a match on the human eye, that's a tough one. Not just because of the monocular/binocular thing, but also because your retina is curved and most cameras and digital approximations assume a flat sensor.

That said, I've done a bit of my own research on this (reading advice from photographers is interesting... not always accurate, but interesting :) recently and landed on the following settings that seem to work reasonably well:

  • Camera Sensor - 35mm
  • Camera Focal Length - 45mm

Clipping distances, you'll need to adjust to taste.

Fweeb
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  • Seems to work, but now I'm getting weird rendering anomalies on my image, black triangles that appear on some objects past a certain distance. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1iSFfHH5VZw/U0WjxcJ3LjI/AAAAAAAAD88/ns8yFSlzkuU/s0/PromenadeDistrict_Render10.png – Zauberin Stardreamer Apr 09 '14 at 19:48
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    You should take a look here for the black triangles issue : http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21/how-do-i-avoid-rendering-glitches-from-overlapping-faces – Polosson Apr 09 '14 at 20:10
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    Adjusting the camera's Near and Far settings can help with those artifacts you are seeing so long as the poly's are close but not actually in the same position. The error has to do with precision of the depth buffer. It's often called z-fighting if you want to do a bit of reading on this. – MarcClintDion Apr 10 '14 at 06:37
  • Yeah, I'm familiar with z-fighting. In my case, it was caused because I had set the near clipping distance to 1cm, down from 10cm because I had been doing some close work on something. I had no idea it would have that kind of effect. On the plus side, I made my geometry a bit better as a result of trying to combat the issue. – Zauberin Stardreamer Apr 11 '14 at 00:06
  • Thats interesting I thought that the common 50mm lens length (for 35mm sensor) was the on that most closely approximated the human eye. – 3pointedit Oct 13 '16 at 11:06
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Try with real factors.

The focal length of human eye is 17mm, so set focal length to 17 millimeters.

The size of retina in human eye is 22mm, so, set sensor size to 22.

I am doing pretty big objects and this settings are very close to real life. To me, looks awesome.

Duarte Farrajota Ramos
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MR BOLEUS
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Focal Length: 17mm and Sensor size: 22mm. Also, 1600x900 as a resolution.

This is what has worked best for me.

I created my house in Blender, and set the camera as I'm sitting on the model couch. The objects I see in the camera compared to real life are best fit with the above numbers.

quellenform
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Andy
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