Radiosity Problem?

[tcupp]

I am getting strange green/red/orange colors when rendering an animation with radiosity. The animation has video playing in it as an AVI/applied as a material to a box. I am also rendering with backburner. It appears as if the video does not render and at the same time the image produced screws up. The problem seems to be totally random from frame to frame. Has anyone else ever had this problem...or have any idea what the problem may be caused by?

[Ricardo Eloy]

First of, these huge images make it harder to see.... post lowres versions, instead.

About the rendering: since you are net rendering the animation, my guess is that your computers are not getting the info they need on time, so they mess it up. Try saving the scene (and the maps) locally and rendering entire parts of the animation in each computer. This will probably work.

[tcupp]

Sorry about the large images...I fixed it. I figuered that rendering locally might be the only fix. I think I was just in denial though bc I only have three licenses of VIZ:(

[tcupp]

I tried rendering it locally and I get the same result. The strange thing is that it does the first frame fine then I get the strange colors in the second frame. It is almost as if it is not recalculating radiosity for that portion of the image once it attempts to do the second frame. Is there any way to force VIZ to recalculate the whole radiosity solution for everyframe?

[Ricardo Eloy]

I believe there is (although I think it's a bad idea, unless you have moving objects). I'm not sure, but Max has a "Compute Advanced Lighting when Required" option. Guess Viz is just the same.

[alfienoakes]

If you look at the images that are incorrect, you can see that the strange coloring is actually the reflection of the screens, which I assume are holding the animated sequences, the monitors..?

 

If you try a test portion of say, 20 frames, but without the screens and their movies, do you get the same results..?

 

As Rick says, you can tell viz to take all materials / movies etc that make up the scene, and pack them into your backburner file. This is a slower way of creating the backburner file, and can cause problems if the file gets too big, but may solve this one for you.

 

Try a few frames without the movies though, and see what happens.

 

As for rendering Radiosity at every frame, as Rick says, only do this if you have objects that are moving, and constantly changing your solution.. otherwise dont try it.. It will take hours..

[tcupp]

I do have objects moving in my scene. The desk opens, so I have been "recalculating radiosity when required." However, I had not considered that I would not have to do it for the sequences where the desk is not moving. I had just assumed that I would have to recalculate because the video was playing. This may save me a ton of render time that I already had figured in.

 

The monitors are holding the animation sequence. I do not get the same result when I remove the movies. I have started going back and re-rendering the frames with problems though...it only does it with about 30% of my animation sequence so it shouldn't be much more than a nights rendering over the network.