questions for max and vray animation

[chow choppe]

hi all

 

I need ur suggestions for this new project

I have done a very few architectural walkthroughs using standard scanline renderer in max

I didnt have good machines earlier so scanline was the way to go

But now i have better knowledge of vray so i think i should do it with vray this time as rendering quality will be better

the master plan of the project is below. its of a complete residential development with individual house , a main building and an apartment building.

see below

 

 

 

now i have few questions in mind as i havent done animations for quite sometime now and none with vray actually

 

A.)first of all is that the machines i have are

1.)a quadcore Q6600 with 4Gb ram , HD3870 512mb card

2.) a dual core X24200+, 2gb ram and 6600GT card

3.) another quad core same as first

 

I cant buy more PCs right now so i have to manage with these only. my deadline for a one minute walkthrough is one month. are these good enough at all for that kind of deadline. What should be the average frame rendering time i should keep in mind for a single frame so that i am as per schedule. also what image size should i keep the frames at

what FPS should i use.

B.)ALso i dont have any experience with rnedering animations with vray.

I wont be having time to facing problems and then putting them here for every small problem so its better to start with right settings atleast.it will be an exterior walkthrough completely of the master plan and also walking down the roads.i have seen tutorial on spot3d.com but i found the rendering with moving objects to be tough for me. so iw ill be having moving cars and people, fountains in the scene. what thinks to keep in mind while rendering those

 

C.) how to optimize a scene for faster rendering maybe if its about reflections, glossiness, antialiasing etc etc because i know its going to be a haeavy scene. how to speed up my workflow whetehr its about modelling , materials or lighting or rendering?

 

D.) i wud like to show a lot of trees. which is the best way to go. i dont have onyx for max 64 bit .any other software or method of rendering vegetation so taht render times dont go too high and i am still able to achieve good results.

vegetation matters a lot during animations

 

E.) now about technical issues like flickering or jaggy animations? what things to keep in mind for this like antialiasing or FPS, so that i dont get this problem while animation rendering

 

I know that the amount of questions i have asked may be too much for you guys but i have learnt a lot from this forum and this project is very precious for me as i am making a lot of investment into it . so i want to do a good job so that i have something really nice for my folio. even if i dont get answers to all this atleast i am sure most of it will be answered by u guys with the knowledge u possess

 

i will appreciate every suggestion

 

thanks

[kippu]

good luck on this job....all of the questions have been dealt before so if you just search a bit and read through ...you will be armed with all the knowledge that you need

[nelpiper]

Many of your questions can be fairly answered if you go to www.cgarchitect.com and click on the VISUALIZATION INSIDER link. They have lots of tutorials and settings on many of your questions. AA, vegetation, very good stuff. For the animation part, to avoid flickering, render the irradiance map and the light cache apart and load the files in. What resolution does your animation must be at? To avoid AA artifacts, use the video filter and render at a higher resolution that you need and scale it down. Hope it helps a bit. Good luck.

[chow choppe]

thanks nelson

 

i will check them out

[chow choppe]

I saw the tutorial at spot3d .com

also saw this http://www.trinity3d.com/tutorials/vray/index.shtml

 

now i am confused on how to club these 2 tutorials together

we generally are looking for animations with moving cars, fountains, people

 

how to start with it?

 

what method should we follow for such animations

[kippu]

either render the moving stuff separately and comp. them together ...or go for single frame irrmap calculation with DMC..... i would rather go with the former.

[chow choppe]

so i do it this way?

first i hide all moving objects and use IR +LC to render just camera moving

and then i hide static objects and unhide moving objects and then do rendering again separately? what settings to use to render moving objects?

any other things that need to be checked before rendering moving objects

 

thanks

[kippu]

use single frame irrmap + brute force for moving objects

[Nic H]

I would consider doing your cars and people in a seperate pass, same with trees if they are going to possibly change you can make small changes without redoing the whole pass - its quicker as you can used precalculated gi for camera move, and single frame medium / high animation settings Irr/Lc (Lc in world mode) for your animated objects .

 

I normally will do a 'save as' and call it 'blah_03_people.max' which is a file with everything *but* the people/cars with a vray matte property of -1, affect shadows ticked - you may want to change relfection to zero if you dont have glossy ground surfaces or lots of glass - that will speed it up. Then comp them together in post! Fairy simple solution to flicker free moving objects.

[chow choppe]

I would consider doing your cars and people in a seperate pass, same with trees if they are going to possibly change you can make small changes without redoing the whole pass - its quicker as you can used precalculated gi for camera move, and single frame medium / high animation settings Irr/Lc (Lc in world mode) for your animated objects .

 

I normally will do a 'save as' and call it 'blah_03_people.max' which is a file with everything *but* the people/cars with a vray matte property of -1, affect shadows ticked - you may want to change relfection to zero if you dont have glossy ground surfaces or lots of glass - that will speed it up. Then comp them together in post! Fairy simple solution to flicker free moving objects.

 

hi nicnic

 

can u please elaborate more on this

i think its getting a little in my head

 

thanks for those explanations

[chow choppe]

nic nic

can u please elaborate ur solution

have never used vray matte

where to access it from? and where to tick all those parameters like affect shadows

[chow choppe]

hi nicnic

Can u please elaborate this

now i know how to use vray matte but how to render these 2 different passes

so that i have proper reflections in car glass/ and if the car is receiving some building shadows while moving. how it can be done?

[Nic H]

now i know how to use vray matte but how to render these 2 different passes

so that i have proper reflections in car glass/ and if the car is receiving some building shadows while moving. how it can be done?

 

It should just work really, how are you setting up your scene?

 

I assume you have your moving object as seperate scene with everything that is not moving as a Vray Matte object (with a vray matte property of -1, affect shadows ticked, sometimes I turn off GI amount as well, depending on scene)

 

The car will reflect and receive shadows from the buildings and surround automatically.

 

This will render your moving object on black with the shadow as well. You need to screen this over your base sequence in a comp program and it will knock out all the blacks leaving your car perfectly in the scene. Id render your car or moving object with prepass animation or high settings single frame GI, and your camera move in the other scene as precalculated imap.

 

Try it on a really simple scene with boxes first, it takes a bit of fiddling but works well. Ill try and make up a file and post it up.

[chow choppe]

thanks nicnic

yes i am trying it with just boxes first

so u mean suppose if ihave trees in the foreground and there is road behind it on which the car is moving so i will get the alpha properly when car is moving behind the trees. I hope u understand what i mean. if the car was in front of the trees alpha creation wud have been easier. will alpha work when its behind the trees and i can composite it easily

 

i am trying it in the meantime

Edited November 21, 2008 by 3dsmaxed

[chow choppe]

It should just work really, how are you setting up your scene?

 

I assume you have your moving object as seperate scene with everything that is not moving as a Vray Matte object (with a vray matte property of -1, affect shadows ticked, sometimes I turn off GI amount as well, depending on scene)

 

The car will reflect and receive shadows from the buildings and surround automatically.

 

This will render your moving object on black with the shadow as well. You need to screen this over your base sequence in a comp program and it will knock out all the blacks leaving your car perfectly in the scene. Id render your car or moving object with prepass animation or high settings single frame GI, and your camera move in the other scene as precalculated imap.

 

Try it on a really simple scene with boxes first, it takes a bit of fiddling but works well. Ill try and make up a file and post it up.

 

When u say turn off the Gi u mean in vray properties of ur still objects u turn of the Visible to Gi option?

[chow choppe]

i just tried it

the alpha works fine. i get proper alpha even if its behind the trees

 

Now another question is when rendering still objects pass shud i hide the moving object or should i uncheck visible to camera in object properties because i want it to be visible in reflections of glass of buildings when its moving. also GI and color bleed wont be visible from this object if i completely hide it.

 

how to go about it?

 

thanks

[chow choppe]

Hi nicnic

 

here is the complete workflow that i followed after reading ur suggestion

see if its right

 

 

Thanks

[Nic H]

looks like you are missing the final step! (comping them together)

do not include the moving object in your 'camera' pass

 

as far as reflections and colour bleed go, that stuff can be done in the moving objects pass, i just often turn off GI amount/reflection amount for things like cars as often you cant tell the difference and teh direct shadow with some ambient occlusion will do the job. all depends what you need.

 

when you do need specific reflections Id do another pass for reflections with a 'save as' of the moving object file with Reflect as 1.0 (in vray properties) on the objects you want relfections on, turn off GI etc and jsut do the relections on the objects you need (glass shopfronts etc) with moving object not renderable.

 

looks like you have got it right though, i still lose my way sometimes. it really depends on the shot / scene and what you can get away with leaving out or quality you need.

[chow choppe]

Hi nicnic

 

i am not including the moving obhect in the camera pass. .the first image in that workflow is what the final image will look like after comping.also in that workflow i attached 2 methods to hide the moving objects while doing the still objects pass

One was hiding the moving object in which we dont get the GI/Color Bleed from the object and also the object is not visible in reflections of other Glass/shopfronts etc. and othermethod is in object properties we uncheck visible to camera. in this case we do get the objects GI/color bleed and also the object is visible in reflections

Which is the right method to use.

 

Also can u tell me how can i just do the reflection pass for reflections of moving objects that will be visible in reflective surfaces of still objects.?

 

thanks for ur time

 

looks like you are missing the final step! (comping them together)

do not include the moving object in your 'camera' pass

 

as far as reflections and colour bleed go, that stuff can be done in the moving objects pass, i just often turn off GI amount/reflection amount for things like cars as often you cant tell the difference and the direct shadow with some ambient occlusion will do the job. all depends what you need.

 

when you do need specific reflections Id do another pass for reflections with a 'save as' of the moving object file with Reflect as 1.0 (in vray properties) on the objects you want relfections on, turn off GI etc and jsut do the relections on the objects you need (glass shopfronts etc) with moving object not renderable.

 

looks like you have got it right though, i still lose my way sometimes. it really depends on the shot / scene and what you can get away with leaving out or quality you need.

[chow choppe]

i am still facing some issues

 

i am confused with this

when i uncheck visible to camera the moving car is hidden and i have also turned off GI properties foor this car.

Now its visible in reflections and not to camera but shadows are still visible. If i turn off cast shadows then shadows are not visible in reflections.

 

whats the right approach towards it

 

Thanks

[chow choppe]

how shud i get shadows of the surroundings on the moving objects?

in what pass it will be done?

in first pass i made the car not visible to camera

so i get the shadow of tha car and also the reflections of the car on still objects.But the shadows that the car will receive from its surroundings are not there. I mean the trees casting shadow on the road should cast shadow on the car when it crosses that area.

 

please help

 

Thanks