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GI settings for Animation


louis.cho
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I am currently trying to render an interior animation with MR3.5 in 3ds max. It's a 10 seconds anim so 300 frames. I have one active light and it is a daylight system.

 

My first test was completly bad. There is so much flickers and big spots who I think is due to a lack of photons. I was using 2000 photon per light and 50 per sample. I know is not enought but the render time was already 12min!

 

I put the settings to 100000 photons per light and 750 per sample. I must forgot that, 1h30 per frame! :(

 

what can I do to find the best settings?

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For animations, good GI settings are a must combined with very low FG settings.

 

Render every nth frame saving the FGM and PM to disk. Then rerender every frame with a Frozen FGM, works a treat.

 

I have just done a 5000 frame animation, moving from outside to inside a multi level shopping centre. It rendered a treat with the above guideline settings. No flickering at all and acceptably fast render times too.

 

JHV

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I made some tests and I am sad about it :(

 

I don't know why but 2 renders next each others are completly differents. I didn't used read/write any maps for these tests. The scene have 50000 photons per lights and 250 per samples. depth, reflect and refract are at 5.

 

I made it on others cpu and they all show the same. All first frame are heavy satured green and took about 1h20 and all second frame took about 15 min and are not satured with that green tint.

 

I don't understand what happend here

 

thanks

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I have just done a 5000 frame animation, moving from outside to inside a multi level shopping centre. It rendered a treat with the above guideline settings. No flickering at all and acceptably fast render times too.

 

JHV

 

What were your times per frame?

 

Also, could you post the animation please? I would like to see it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

How many bounces are you doing? Each bounces takes about another factor of time to render.

 

Here are some of my personal notes on some mental ray things:

 

Density versus Rays

More rays are required for scenes with a small, bright window (High Contrast scene).

Fewer rays are required for scenes with even illumination, like a white office with many light sources (no daylight).

Typical values are:

* fewer than 50 rays for even illumination

* 100-150 for average scenes

* 1000-10000 for high contrast scenes

 

 

Combining Final Gather and Photons can give a speedup of up to 5 times.

Use Photons to distribute energy rapidly in a scene. Photons can easily perform many bounces.

 

 

Anti-Alias is controlled via: Renderer tab -> Samples per Pixel

Min: 1/4 and Max: 16 is good

Min: 1/4 and Max: 256 rocks

This works independently of Final Gathering, and helps any rendering.

 

 

I'm still learning mental ray, but Bri at MentalBoutMax is an absolute Guru.

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Also remeamber tha if you are combining Photons with FG, it only does 1 bounce, regardless if its set higher. ( I was recently corrected about this, and its in the manual ;) )

 

SandmanNinja, a couple of things, 1000+ FG samples , are you kidding?

"Min: 1/4 and Max: 16 is good

Min: 1/4 and Max: 256 rocks"

 

1, 16 is best, 4, 16 is the same as scanline and 1/4, 256 is way too extreme ie too little undersampling and too much oversampling.

 

JHV

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  • 3 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Hello,

 

1st time posting, long time reader...

 

I was wondering if the FGM and PM technique be used with a rendering farm?

I mean to actually calculate the FGM and PM during the render nth frame phase? Or does this have to be done on one computer 1st then the final render all frames phase done on the farm?

 

Thanks!

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oh also I'm having some flickering shadow issues with an MR animation. Will this FGM PM method help with this as well as reduce rendering times? Or can you please point me in any other direction as to reduce the flickering shadows?

 

Your help is much appreciated!

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