13.3. Mist

Relevant to Blender v2.31

Mist can greatly enhance the illusion of depth in your rendering. To create mist, Blender basically mixes the background color with the object color and enhances the strength of the former, the further the object is away from the camera. The Mist settings are in the Mist Stars Physics Panel and are shown in Figure 13-4.

Figure 13-4. Mist buttons

The Mist Button toggles mist on and off. The row of three Toggle Buttons below this button set the decay rate of the mist as Quadratic, Linear, and Square Root. These settings control the law which governs the strength of the mist as you move further away from the camera.

The mist begins at a distance from the camera as defined by the Sta: button, and is computed over a distance defined by the Di: button. Objects further from the camera than Sta+Di are completely hidden by the mist.

By default, the mist covers all of the image uniformly. To produce a more realistic effect you might want to have the mist decrease with height (altitude, or z) using the Hi: NumButton. If the value of this button is non-zero it sets, in Blender units, an interval, around z=0 in which the mist goes from maximum intensity (below) to zero (above).

Finally, the Misi: NumButton defines the intensity, or strength, of the mist.

Figure 13-5 shows a possible test set up.

Figure 13-5. Mist test setup

Figure 13-6 shows the results with and without mist. The settings are shown in Figure 13-7; the texture is a plain procedural cloud texture with Hard noise set.

Figure 13-6. Rendering without mist (left) and with mist (right).

Figure 13-7. World set up.

TipMist distances
 

To see what the mist will actually affect, select your camera, go to Editing Context (F9) and press the Show Mist TogButton in the Camera Panel. The camera will show mist limits as a segment projecting from the camera starting from Sta and of distance Di.