Decreasing Animation time

[Geoffc]

I'm under a huge deadline and need to produce about 100 seconds of animation, and can budget about 3 full days (72 hours) of processor time (project management and time coordination are not in our office's vocabulary ). So, best case that leaves me with ~1.4 minutes to render each frame.

 

Last time I did an animation, I just left the settings kinda high, hdr sky, etc and was getting about 4.8 minutes per frame. Since I have a dual dual Boxx, I normally can afford to do that.

 

So what are the biggest time factors I can reduce in general, while still using GI and hopefully some detailed objects and also not getting the GI splotches?

 

My first guess is to not use the HDR sky, and instead map a simple gradient to a dome. I suppose eliminating all reflection from materials, except for the glass would be key too.

 

I guess my question really relates though to the Vray specific issues of GI, IR maps, subdivisions, etc.

[Geoffc]

btw, i realize there are a million threads on this here and at chaos, but im so busy updating the model, i dont have time to use the ubiquitous Search button right now. I'm just looking for suggestions for the largest and simplest time savers to be aware of.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

unless your target resolution is 320x240, i am going to say that your best bet is to outsource the rendering to a renderfarm company. IMO, 1.4 minutes is to low to get everything to look proper and have enough AA to keep it from dancing.

 

also, did you leave time for troubleshooting, compositing, editing, and compression?

 

...if you do render it yourself, you might try dropping to 24 frames per second to save your self a little time.

[hughie]

If you cannot outsource to a render farm, my first though would be to resort to an old classical animation trick: shoot on twos. in other words only render every second frame and double the frame time in what ever package you use to compile the frames in. though this is a tough compromise to make

What Vray settings do you usually use for rendering an animation?

[Brian Smith]

render farm all the way...wouldnt even consider trying to do it any other way with that short a deadline.

 

but nonetheless,

• render no more than 24 fps
  
• irmap with low preset, 20hsph subdivs, all other settings default
  
• use a large Every Nth frame value for creating the irmap
  
• lc with 500 subdivs all other settings default
  
• qmc image sampler with min/max of 2/5
  
• dont touch the noise thresh
  
• 100% importance sampling
  
• disable blurry reflections if any
  

that should minimize rendertimes

[kippu]

if its an exterior without trees and displacement, it can be done with 2 machines hopefully

[Tommy L]

If its an external, dont use the secondary bounce. What AA settings are you using? Put it on 0,2 or -1,2

[Geoffc]

Thanks for all suggestions.

the 24fps seems to be a great idea.

It is exterior, perhaps I'll have to turn off all the displacement on the grass and try and use minimal trees for the render.

 

And brian, thanks for those specific settings, I'll make sure and test them.

 

You know, I do have a core duo laptop at my disposal, but since my main is Max9 64 bit, DR becomes excessively complicated, especially with the shared materials. It's quite frustrating really, I've experimented with DR a few times in the past months, and each and every time its leads me to a dead end of some sort.

 

If DR was much easier to setup and use (and I was more familiar with sharing max libraries), I'd very quickly build or buy render slaves and setup my own little farm.

 

I've never used an outside renderfarm. How difficult is it to get them your materials, bitmaps, settings, etc? And how quick is their turn around normally?

[Geoffc]

If its an external, dont use the secondary bounce. What AA settings are you using? Put it on 0,2 or -1,2

 

I normally use Mitchell and QMC for AA. But I'm open for suggestions.

And I love the idea of no secondary bounce.

[manta]

Don't use DR for an animation, use backburner...

DR is for stills...

[Geoffc]

Ive never tried backburner really, especially for animation.

 

How does it work through vray? I think ive read that people have used DR and Backburner? All I remember is that it about made my head explode.

 

But if it is easy to setup, I'd def be willing to have it do a test run!

[Tommy L]

If youre rendering on more than one computer (a farm) then you ned to use Backburner to manage the farm. Its fairly simple. if you have 3 identical computers, you will cut the render time in 3.

[Nic H]

backburner is easy and pretty foolproof, its definately worth taking soemtime setting it up.

 

for rendering speed decrease other than render outsource, reflection depth and glossy reflections are time killers along with opacity maps.

 

I always untick 'trace relfection' in animation to save time so you get the spec highlight but without the raytracing component. It works well, and keeps some depth. Displacement can alos be probelematic for rendertimes, use it sparingly, only for closeups.

[landrvr1]

Gotta say this, because it's not said often enough:

 

At some point, when you've got those VRay settings about as low as they can go, it might be a good idea to just do the project in Scanline. With good fakiosity, you can still get excellent results in Scanline.

 

One thing VRay isn't good at is low to middle of the road output. Test after test I've conducted on getting VRay rendertimes down to the bare minimum produces results that are little better than an excellent Scanline job - at half (or better) the rendertimes.

 

It's like buying a Ferrari and doing most of your driving at 45mph - what's the point?

[Koper]

render farm all the way...wouldnt even consider trying to do it any other way with that short a deadline.

 

but nonetheless,

• render no more than 24 fps
  
• irmap with low preset, 20hsph subdivs, all other settings default
  
• use a large Every Nth frame value for creating the irmap
  
• lc with 500 subdivs all other settings default
  
• qmc image sampler with min/max of 2/5
  
• dont touch the noise thresh
  
• 100% importance sampling
  
• disable blurry reflections if any
  

that should minimize rendertimes

 

 

as we are also rendering an animation now we discovered that when you tick the 'don't render final image' check box, it goes really FAST

 

good luck dude

[Geoffc]

as we are also rendering an animation now we discovered that when you tick the 'don't render final image' check box, it goes really FAST

 

good luck dude

 

That's hilarious, I did that by accident before I went to bed last night.

Started a 240 frame render and forgot to untick that box, being 1am and all. Doh!

[Geoffc]

Gotta say this, because it's not said often enough:

 

At some point, when you've got those VRay settings about as low as they can go, it might be a good idea to just do the project in Scanline. With good fakiosity, you can still get excellent results in Scanline.

 

One thing VRay isn't good at is low to middle of the road output. Test after test I've conducted on getting VRay rendertimes down to the bare minimum produces results that are little better than an excellent Scanline job - at half (or better) the rendertimes.

 

It's like buying a Ferrari and doing most of your driving at 45mph - what's the point?

 

You know, I've actually considered this too. Problem is I haven't messed with faking it with scanline in years.

A huge bonus though, no one, ie, the planning commission, the public viewers or the developer understands how good an animation can look. They would be impressed even with a blocky wireframe. BUT, since I designed this building, I'm holding myself to a much higher standard, since I've seen how good 'real' animations can be.

[Koper]

That's hilarious, I did that by accident before I went to bed last night.

Started a 240 frame render and forgot to untick that box, being 1am and all. Doh!

 

hahahaha:D

it really sucks , that button is gr8 but also very stupid:mad:

[Geoffc]

wow, I was just reading up on Respower.

 

$300/day is very very enticing. I was expecting the $2000 fee for outsourcing.

 

My biggest fear is that being a complete fool when it comes to materials and scene resources, I will somehow not send up the correct files.

 

I'm a dam expert with autocad xrefs, blocks, and support files, but have never taken the time to learn correctly with Max. So we'll see...

[Tommy L]

You can use the archive facility, then render something from your archive and see if it looks right. Archive pulls in all your extranious bits 'n bobs.

[hughie]

the same would go for Collect Resources in Utilities, it collects all the resources in to one folder

[Tommy L]

Does this re-direct the all links to the new folder, or is it the same as archive in that it re-creates the folder structure in the archived file?

[hughie]

Umm neither , it just dumps all the files into one folder, where I suppose you would have write a new map path.

SO there is no real advantage of using it except that all the files are in one place, rather than with Archive where it creates a new folder hierarchy.

[Tommy L]

Well in that case, unless youre anal about folders and sub-folders, Id go with the archive function.

[Geoffc]

ok, so I'm going with ResPower. Let's see how well this goes. Always fun to experiment the day before a deadline.

 

 

I have one basic question though:

There are multiple cameras in my file. I'm using "multiframe incremental" with 'dont delete' 'auto save' and 'switch to saved map', so I can send them a pre-calc'd IR map.

 

I cal'd the longest fly-around camera first. Now I'm starting the other cameras, adding to the same IR map that is saved on my drive.

 

I'm still unclear of one of the basic concepts of the IR map:

As long as I dont move anything (besides the camera) or change light sources, will all cameras add to the same solution, no matter which angle they are shot from, including aerial, horizontal, etc, and not conflict with each other?

Does that mean there's essentially a "complete" solution if you did enough passes from every possible angle?

I hope so, because this is what I'm uploading to use for each camera's renders.