Depth of Field

To provide a more dramatic aesthetic, I wanted to include depth of field. this would also better focus the attention on the particular character that I wanted. The depth of field attribute works exactly like it does in a physical camera with adjustable settings such as these:

All of which are key-able which makes it easier to incorporate some dynamic depth of field effects to enhance the visuals of the aniamiton. It was time to render out a frame with depth of field on and another with depth of field off. This is due to the fact that my render times were so large that I wanted to see what difference it would make being so close to the deadline.

With depth of field:

without depth of field:

As you can see, the effect is subtle but it adds that little bit of real world effect. The only issue is that the render time shoots up, with depth of field the render time was 14:34 which is very large for one frame, whereas without depth of field it dropped to 8:02 so almost 6 minutes of rendering time per frame which would add another 11 days onto my render total. 

This taught me that even a subtle effect can have a vast effect of the render which makes me confirm how one must keep tabs, to the absolute point, on which settings are being used instead of going off changing things here and there to see what will happen. this would unintentionally add unnecessary time onto the final render.