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night animation


Tommy L
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15 Minutes is still a long time ... without seeing settings, the only thing I can imagine that will reduce your rendertimes is removing as many lights as possible. Might require some changes in back-end geometry to allow 'floodlighting' (ie, using one light to do the same job as 20)...

 

I take it you are doing all your irradiance map etc first before you render the frames?

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What does this look like without GI on? With so many lights, you may be living on direct light almost exclusively. Try turning off GI, see what you get. Re-render the same frame with GI, then compare them (put one over the other in Photoshop, use difference mode to see where there are differences, the more black the more similar they are).

 

Also--what about some baking for interiors? Can vray do that? Its a good way to cut out a lot of geometry from active GI calcs.

 

Otherwise, it looks good. Except for the feeling of an island of lit stuff. You probably have a plan already, but you should make some luminance maps for the background to give the feeling of other habitated areas.

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Tom, how in the heck are you getting 6min rendertimes with that much glass and reflections? Care to share some tips!? :eek:

 

OK, well, now the render times are 20mins due to tweaks etc.

1) The AA settings are low (0/2)

2) All the glass is set to 'not cast shadows' in max properties.

3) Most lights have shadows turned off.

4) Only essential reflections are turned on (glass and shop awnings).

5) ALL lights are attenuated (very important)

6) No large bitmaps (helps prevent crashes more than speed issue)

7) Render settings are low.

8) Instance as much as possible.

9) Lights are only 'including' their local objects.

 

With the low render settings and the low AA settings I dont know how the movie manages to look good, but it does.

 

Now Im putting in cars and its dying. Probably have to cmp them but nevermind.

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Well ive managed to shoe-horn in a couple of high-medium poly cars and here are the results. The second image has GI turned off. I feel it needs to be on. 15min without GI, 19 with it on, but that overhead will be divided by 10 when Pre-calculated every 10 frames, so the gain is worth it.

 

The problem i have is with moving objects (cars) and GI. If i make the moving geometry not visible to GI in the vray properties, will there be any weird GI probs with the cars? Or will they look ok but just less illuminated than the rest of the scene?

 

Also, as the lights attached to the cars are moving, will they cause probs? I have right-clicked them and unticked 'diffuse' and 'caustic' (caustics are off anyways) or is direct light just calculated in the render. Is there any other solutions to moving geometry with incremental Irradience map?

 

Thanks again,

Tom.

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I feel it needs to be on. 15min without GI, 19 with it on, but that overhead will be divided by 10 when Pre-calculated every 10 frames, so the gain is worth it.

 

Normally I'm all for keeping GI on, even when it makes no sense. The time gain you mention does support your case. But I still wanted to see what the difference is, see attached. You could easily add enough light to make the non-GI look like the GI. Remember that its really not all that black at night when you are near civilization. So some ambient fill wouldn't hurt. Also, compression of animation can collapse low-light areas to puddles of black ink.

 

The headlights are too sharp, the tail-lights to bright. Unless you want to do that cliche Vegas shot with the lights reflected in car paint, I would suggest raising the specular on the cars but lowering the reflectivity. Make a car read as a single object.

 

Overall, this piece is coming together nicely.

 

This image is what separates the two, once you equalize the brightness. You can see what you would have to add to the non-GI to equal the GI.

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I think you forgot to attach something Ernest, but no matter, i think you were going to attach the p/shop 'difference' layer you mentioned in another post. I do appreciate that the renders are very similar, but im going to keep the GI.

Ive added more fill lights and ill post the result when it finishes rendering.

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Well here are pretty much the final frames. Its been a learning curve for me: home-made 3d trees and a night animation. There are still some changes (uplighting trees, fixing some textures and road-map has moved somehow) but i think the next post will be links to the movies. Crits much appreciated, its not too late to change, and thanks for bearing with the long thread, its been a massive help (Flyte, Ernest et al).

 

Render-time around 12mins, cars are included in scene. GI is on, precalculated irr-map. Some fixing of levels in post. And above all, no rpcs!

 

Cheers!

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nope, went like clockwork. I highly recommend optimizing like theres no tomorro just to get to the stage where you can put high poly cars in your scene. I hate all the hassle of doing cars in a seperate file. Its real difficult to get the reflections right and the lighting right and the comping bang on. In fact, if the camera moves alot, i dont know how to get the reflections onto cars in a seperate file. Im now working on getting the cameras looking cool and some DOF passes in a seperate file using MR, but the deadline looms!

 

Ive learnt sooo much doing this night animation. Any questions you have that this thread doesnt address, drop me a line.

good luck.

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