Flicker in vray animation, need urgent help

[pradipta]

I am getting flicker in the entire animation. i am using vray 1.47 with 3dsmax8.

 

the following is the setting i used:

 

I used IR map for primary GI and LC for secondary GI engine. I am posting the vray setting screen shots from my file.

 

I render in 720*540 resolution. Some more details would be like, i generated LC and IR map for every frame since I rendered using a remote rendering farm. The scene is an interior of a mall. And the wall, ceiling and floor is giving the flickers, light is showing from the point where two surfaces are meeting, reflective materials are almost perfect than the non-reflective materials.

 

We are running out of time since the project dedline is very close. I will be gratefull for any help. Thanks a lot.

[manta]

Well it could be that you're using lower settings than I ussually use for a still shot, which ain't gonna cut it for animation, its that inacuracy that is giving you the flickering, change your IRR. preset to high animation, and calculate every 5th or 10th frame, if the camera is moving fast then go for every 5th, and raise your light cache to at least default which is 1,000...

[pradipta]

William, thanks for your response.

 

when i used 1000 for LC in still render, it came absolutely clean. but, i cannt afford that much high setting in case animation. do you also recomend saving IR map before going for the rendering all the frames. i did not do that since i was using a remote rendering farm for the render and i dont know their directoy structure. i will try using a higer setting to see how it comes. Thanks again

[BrianKitts]

precalculation (IMO) is the only way to get an animation done in any decent amount of time.

 

On a side note I used respower the other weekend to render out a minute long animation (about 1800 frames) right now they are offering a 24 hour unlimited pass for $300 (USD). It was quite worth it...... that being said even with a renderfarm like respower, they limit your frame times to 2 hours max.

 

They say you get access to over 700 machines, but you don't most I ever got all at once was like 280, and most of them are like single 3.0ghz processors based on the time it was taking to crank stuff out. 20 mins on my machine = 1 hour on theirs.

 

So back to the point again the precalculated irradiance passes was a big benefit to keep rendering times down, still getting quality and was still able to use an outside render farm. And if you're worried about the folder structure.... use the archive function to compile all your project resources and content (and irradiance maps). dump it all on the non-local server in one folder with your max file. And then it should find everything if its set up like respowers was. And if not you just have to add a link to that one folder to your project paths.

[manta]

yes definitely save and reuse your IRR. maps as well as your light cache maps...

[pradipta]

Brian, i am also using respower. we used the 4 days unlimited for US%$1000 and regarding speed its not much compared to my own comp.

William, yes, i am now calculating LC and IRR maps separately. i hope this will remove the flicker from the animation.

Thanks a lot for your help.

[kippu]

 

On a side note I used respower the other weekend to render out a minute long animation (about 1800 frames) right now they are offering a 24 hour unlimited pass for $300 (USD).

 

 

i went to their site.... is that offer still on ?

[pradipta]

Yes, the offer is still there. we got that subscription on 27th of this month.

[Clifton Santiago]

You must precalc your IR on a single machine with Multiframe incremental to keep your animation from flickering. Regardless of whether you precalc every frame or every 10th frame, it must be precalculated unless you use a brute force method. High or low settings for IR map will affect quality, but not flickering.

 

Without precalcing IR, you are letting a different machine calculate each frame. Because IR is an approximate method, each machine's calculations will be slightly different. When you then animate the frames, the areas of indirect lighting will flicker because of the different solutions per frame.

 

With a single machine calculating the IR pass with multiframe incremental, the machine is only calculating the new areas it sees per Nth frame. As such, it never re-calculates things it has already resolved, so there is never any difference in the IR map per frame. This results in a smooth, flicker-free animation.

 

I recommend you get Chris Nichol's Vray Exteriors DVD for more on this topic.