Trees for animation

[ZFact]

Hi;

how do you guys optimize a animated scene with a large number of 3d trees in it. I tried excluding the trees from the GI... but they end up to dark... any suggestions?

 

Thanks for any advice

I am using FR2 at the minute for this animation... wouldnt it be great if you could control which elements of a scene get more samples for more accurate gi and which get less samples were accuracy is not needed.

[ARTECmedia]

Render Engine ?

[sstamfb]

download forest pro (itoo software)

[STRAT]

guys, please check which forum the question is being asked in.

 

we use vb trees. yes, for an animation yhey sure can slow things down, not only due to the gi but the aa too. personally, i'll exclude them from the gi solution and render them out in a separate pass in the AR, again, without gi. you can always tweek the materials to give a 'gi like' appearence.

[ZFact]

guys, please check which forum the question is being asked in.

 

we use vb trees. yes, for an animation yhey sure can slow things down, not only due to the gi but the aa too. personally, i'll exclude them from the gi solution and render them out in a separate pass in the AR, again, without gi. you can always tweek the materials to give a 'gi like' appearence.

 

Thanks Strat...

Do you render them out on their own... with an alpha map..? can you reveal your workflow for this method?

 

Cheers

[STRAT]

i'll render out the main final scene in vray or fr or whatever, all without trees, as a set of images.

 

then in the AR, i'll load up the final scene, with trees. I'll then frontal map the entire model with the sequence of images i've just rendered, but the trees i'll leave as they are with their original materials.

 

i'll set the gi to off, adjust the tree textures to suit the lack of gi (easily done using various illum levels and contrasts etc), put in a nominal light for illumination, switch on AA then hit render.

 

The trees render and interact and AA nicely with the scene, and it renders uber fast. alpha mapped trees render super fast in the AR, thats why i choose this method.

 

this is only one method (i prefer it to the separate alpha pass methods), but it's only one way to skin a cat

[ZFact]

sounds good for stills... but would this not be quite labourious in animation... you know.. setting up a new frontal map for each frame? perhaps im missing something??

[STRAT]

sounds good for stills... but would this not be quite labourious in animation... you know.. setting up a new frontal map for each frame? perhaps im missing something??

 

you are.

 

put all the mesh (bar the trees) into a single null. mass select all the materials and erase them.

Then make a new material, using the set of sequentially rendered images you did previously. Put the image set into the illum channel of the material and assign the material to the top of the null, making sure to use FRONTAL projection. all the model in the null now contains this animated material

 

Make sure you also put a comping tag on the top of the null making sure you check on "compositing background" (so it can catch the tree shadows) and switch everything else off other than "seen by camera" and "receive shadows" And as i mentioned earlier, keep all the trees as normal.

 

now, when you render, the AR bangs through the frontal-mapped model like a hot knife through butter, but also nicely renders the trees into them.

[ZFact]

my god your good... where do you learn this stuff...

 

one question... when you mass delete the materials, the X'd materials

still holds the texture place in the object... do you have to physically

go in a delete each x'd material by hand or is there a quick method.

Hope that makes sense...

 

How do you assign a image set... do you just select all images in the sequence

I'll give it a try anyway...

[STRAT]

my god your good... where do you learn this stuff...

 

i'm just that sad mate

 

 

one question... when you mass delete the materials, the X'd materials

still holds the texture place in the object... do you have to physically

go in a delete each x'd material by hand or is there a quick method.

Hope that makes sense...

 

yes, you need to un-assign the materials from the meshes too, not just from the library. ok, i'm assuming all the mesh bits are in a null all with X'd materials. drag one of the X materials to the top of the null, so the null has it assigned. Then right click on that material and click on "select identical child tags". it then selects all the X materials. Then just hit delete once

 

 

.

How do you assign a image set... do you just select all images in the sequence

I'll give it a try anyway...

 

place the first image in the sequence in the illum tag, and when you see the little picture click on it and go into the animation tag at the top. you can set all the specifics you need from here

[ZFact]

very good sir... i'll give it a go tomorrow... so I take it you use the same technique if you need a quick still image rendered?

[STRAT]

depends. i'm using oct processing beasts with vrayforc4d, so no, if it's a still i'll generally render straight out of cinema, but, i'll usually pre-render the gi pass. with vray i can pre-render the gi pass at less than 1/2 the full size final render and get superb results.

 

but if i'm animating then yes, i'll use this method. personally, i love vb trees and foliage, but vray is very slow with alpha maps and AA together, so i'll take the vb's back into the AR and do it this way. I dont have the gi with the AR, but they render really fast with AA, and you can get them looking good anyway. Most peeps would recommend the separate alpha pass method as standard, but i personally think, for c4d in particular, this method is excellent

 

As we speak i'm currently rendering a large 360 degree fly around of an industrial unit on a green field site surrounded by trees of all shapes and sizes. i've put all my trees in as vb's, but the take an age to render in vray. so i'm rendering the anim without them in vray, then applying the rendered animation frames over the main model as a frontal map in the AR, adding the vb's back in and rendering the anim again. this'll give me a set of rendered frames with added trees and foliage (ok, minus gi on the trees, but i can live with that)

 

There's all logic in my methods, however unorthodox it sounds. Go try it out, any probs then shout!

[ZFact]

Thanks Stephen;

I'll give it a whirl now and let you know how i get on!

[ZFact]

then shout!

 

ok.. iv tried this out but im having problems getting the image

sequence to work in the animation tab... I had a bit of a play

around with it but no luck... does it matter what your frames

are named?... mine are 010001 - 010090...

 

I dont think that is the problem but im not sure... can you let me

know how you stick the frames in there and should it be on simple

or loop etc etc?

 

Cheers man

[STRAT]

remind me in the morning when i have cinema open in work

 

(i've been on the go all day today)

[ZFact]

remind me in the morning when i have cinema open in work

 

(i've been on the go all day today)

 

MORNING REMINDER... PAUL NEEDS HELP PLEASE!!

[Trick]

Using this method, how do you get reflections from the trees ?

[STRAT]

ok.. iv tried this out but im having problems getting the image

sequence to work in the animation tab... I had a bit of a play

around with it but no luck... does it matter what your frames

are named?... mine are 010001 - 010090...

 

I dont think that is the problem but im not sure... can you let me

know how you stick the frames in there and should it be on simple

or loop etc etc?

 

Cheers man

 

as long as your frames run in sequential number order they should run.

As for the exact settings i cant recall right now as my machines are on a render job and i cant test. but it's a fairly standard procedure. Experiment or ask in the cgtalk c4d forum on image sequence rendering if you're still stuck. sorry

 

 

Trick - this method isn't perfect by any means, so dont expect full render control. you can get basic reflections by using clever render/comping tags.

[gdrakakis]

depends. i'm using oct processing beasts with vrayforc4d, so no, if it's a still i'll generally render straight out of cinema, but, i'll usually pre-render the gi pass. with vray i can pre-render the gi pass at less than 1/2 the full size final render and get superb results.

 

hi Strat,

actually this method works with AR also.

you can render the scene (with vbtrees included) at 1/4th or 1/6th of the final resolution, save the gi solution, and re-use it with the final animation.

the hi-res animation renders with the speed of the ray-trace engine, plus, this way you can also have reflections of the trees.

i used this method for stills, when i had an old pii @ 800Mhz, and cut render times by ~40-50%.

 

ps: don't be afraid to pump up the gi settings for the low-res pass. due to small image size it doesn't add much render time.

 

hth,

george

[STRAT]

hi Strat,

actually this method works with AR also.

you can render the scene (with vbtrees included) at 1/4th or 1/6th of the final resolution, save the gi solution, and re-use it with the final animation.

the hi-res animation renders with the speed of the ray-trace engine, plus, this way you can also have reflections of the trees.

 

nope. you cannot render a smaller GI pre-pass with expected results. unlike vray, a smaller gi pass in the AR wont look good. you must render the same size. besides, whats the point if you cant render successful GI animation in the AR without it's famous slowdown bug?

[gdrakakis]

nope. you cannot render a smaller GI pre-pass with expected results.

perhaps you should give it a try. i am talking about a red-low-res-prepass (-> over crowded with samples).

although i want to take part and work with arch-viz studios, i am not a professional visualizer.

i am an architect and most of the times, short animations are made for use with in the office and not client-presentation purposes. superb quality is not an important issue to me , but evaluating forms & volumes, through a walk-through, it definitely is.

 

besides, whats the point if you cant render successful GI animation in the AR without it's famous slowdown bug?

yes, i've read about this several times @ cg talk.

i wonder if a diffuse gi saved pre-pass of the whole scene, (no matter if some mats are glossy or not) would help.

 

cheers,

george

[STRAT]

perhaps you should give it a try. i am talking about a red-low-res-prepass (-> over crowded with samples).....superb quality is not an important issue to me ....

 

of course i've tried it or how could i know to comment? and yes, i need the best quality i can get. an approximation of the AR re-sizing it's gi map isn't the same quality as rendering at the original size.

 

 

 

 

 

i wonder if a diffuse gi saved pre-pass of the whole scene,

 

cheers,

george

 

 

what is this? you cant pre-cache a gi pass for an animation in the AR. it's all live on the fly so to speak.

[gdrakakis]

what is this? you cant pre-cache a gi pass for an animation in the AR. it's all live on the fly so to speak.

 

hi STRAT,

i was referring to seperate pass with non-glossy materials, with "save solution" enabled, and a second pass with the actual materials and "save solution" disabled & "recompute" set to never.

[STRAT]

hi STRAT,

i was referring to seperate pass with non-glossy materials, with "save solution" enabled, and a second pass with the actual materials and "save solution" disabled & "recompute" set to never.

 

that wont produce an acceptable quality i'm afraid

it also wont avoid the slowdown

[gdrakakis]

that wont produce an acceptable quality i'm afraid

it also wont avoid the slowdown

 

yes, i was afraid that you were gonna say that .

but slowdown @ 300*200 is better then 900*600.

my standards are different than yours.

this is the best i can come up with

http://georgedrakakis.cgsociety.org/gallery/582177/