I am continuing to work on my next professional architectural visualization course.  This one will be, as promised, all about Photoshop for architectural visualization.  It is important to learn Photoshop as a 3d artist, because post-processing is what can really set an image apart from the crowd.  

Throghout much of the course I will be discussing Vray render channels (elements), and showing how to leverage them properly in your scene to really enhance the raw 3d rendering.  This particular sneak peak at my course covers the Vray Zdepth channel.

Zdepth is a black and white map that contains depth information.  Basically, white is close to the camera, and black is far away.  So, there is a complete range of depth in your scene, depending on how far things are away from the camera point of view.  This map can tell the computer how far things are away from you in relationship to other objects in the scene.  With this information, some cool things are made possible.  This video shows how to first, use the depth information to create depth of field blurring - just like a physical camera, and second, add atmospheric perspective to your rendering by adding fog / haze.  Both of these things can be accomplished within the rendering as well, but doing it in post potentially saves a lot of render time, and also gives you much more control.  

Check out the video to see what I am talking about, and stay tuned for updates (and discounts) on the upcoming course.