New V-ray Irradiance map for animations

[Matt Sugden]

Can someone advise me, can the latest version of v-ray deal with moving objects in animations using the multiframe incremental irradiance map?

 

I.e. calculating the irradiance map first then using the saved map, with animated objects.

 

I believe older versions couldn't, as the light calculation left shadows etc where geometry had moved position. Cheers.

[STRAT]

in c4d you dont use multi-frame-incremental for animation with moving objects. you use Anim prepass and render modes.

[Matt Sugden]

does anyone know if that is the same story in Max?

 

Cheers

[JamesTaylor]

yeap thats the same for max. It creates a separate irr map for each frame and then interpolates between a given no of them each side of the current frame to avoid flickering.

 

as always, check out http://www.spot3d.com for further info!

[Matt Sugden]

so does it still work with 'nth frame' rendering, as in every 5th or 10th, as it does with the static object animations?

 

Cheers for your answers so far.

[Matt Sugden]

Hello, sorry to raise this thread from the dead. I just wondered how effect the animation prepass setting is for animated objects, as my scenes are very heavily animated.

 

Also do I have to render the irr map for every frame with animation prepass? or can I do nth frames? and save render time? how effective is it doing it this way?

 

Cheers

[Devin Johnston]

You can't do nth frames with prepass for the very reason that you could never render out successful animated objects using the same method. You have to render out every frame in prepass but the good news is you can use backburner to do it with as many render nodes as you have available.

[Ricardo Eloy]

Indeed. You can only use the Nth Frame option if the only thing moving is the camera. Otherwise, it's frame by frame.

[landrvr1]

I've done numerous tests using the new Animation-prepass/Animation-rendering feature on scenes with moving objects, and the results have been less than stellar. Quite poor, in fact, regardless of how high you crank the settings. The best method for me is still IR/LC, rendering each frame separately, using the High-animation IR preset.

 

All of the films I create only feature brief segments with moving furniture/objects, so the overall rendertimes are kept reasonable.

[Devin Johnston]

I've done numerous tests using the new Animation-prepass/Animation-rendering feature on scenes with moving objects, and the results have been less than stellar.

 

I'm suprised, what kind of problems have you had?

[landrvr1]

I'm suprised, what kind of problems have you had?

 

The pesky flickering. I just couldn't get it down to acceptable levels. No matter how many frames I set for interpolation, or how high the IR settings, the flickering was pretty bad.

 

A lot of people advise that doing Brute Force for moving objects is the only way to go, but I've had excellent results using IR/LC; keeping the IR setting at High-animation.

 

If you know of any good tips & tricks for the new animation-prepass method, I'd sure love to hear about them. It's a feature that I and my associates were really excited about, but it's just not panning out.

[Mechadus]

Hey all - Ive been working with animated objects in Vray also recently - from my experience (which is very limited with heavily animated scenes), I have found that LC/QMC seems to give me the best results. I leave the LC on single frame, and mess with the rQMC settings till I get all the noise out of the animation. I have never had the flickering problems with these settings, but depending on your settings the render times can be somewhat high for a nice noise-free result.

 

I would be really interested to hear about anybody else's experiences with animation in Vray

 

-Nick

[Matt Sugden]

Well the reason I am interested is because recently I've had to do a LOT of animated objects, the sequence I am currently working has two cranes, a telehandler, concrete mixer and concrete pourer all animated at once. There's a lot going on to say the least.

 

I'm finding that single frame brute force on high irr map setting is bringing the best result, but having said that I don't have the luxury of the new anim prepass feature.

 

I feel kinda disappointed from the comment before that it isn't too hot, as currently my rendering times are pretty horrific, about a day for 1000 frames over 7 pcs. I think this anim is about 10,000 frames in total.

[landrvr1]

Well the reason I am interested is because recently I've had to do a LOT of animated objects, the sequence I am currently working has two cranes, a telehandler, concrete mixer and concrete pourer all animated at once. There's a lot going on to say the least.

 

I'm finding that single frame brute force on high irr map setting is bringing the best result, but having said that I don't have the luxury of the new anim prepass feature.

 

I feel kinda disappointed from the comment before that it isn't too hot, as currently my rendering times are pretty horrific, about a day for 1000 frames over 7 pcs. I think this anim is about 10,000 frames in total.

 

Hmm, 10k frames - so you're looking at about a 5min clip? Is that 5min where something is moving pretty much the whole time? If that's the case, then you are in for a bit of a wait...

 

There's a pretty good little tut on the new feature here:

 

http://www.trinity3d.com/tutorials/vray/blending_irradiance_maps/index.shtml

 

Do a quick test and see if you have any luck. Just remember, this process is going to create a separate IR map file for EVERY frame. When you're done with the animation-prepass step, and ready to move to the animation-render step, just select the first IR map in the sequence. Each subsequent map will load automatically after that.

[Mechadus]

24 hours for 1000 frames on 7 machines really isnt all that horrible... Its a lot of time, yes, but thats very close to what my interior animations run when we are doing high quality interior animations. Compared to the 36 hours a frame some of the shots from Wall-e took, its pretty good actually!

 

Have you thought of rendering your animated objects as separate passes from your static objects? You could render your animated objects QMC/LC and your static objects IR/LC, then just put it all back together in After Effects or another compositing package.

 

-Nick

[landrvr1]

That works out to about 12 min per frame, correct?

[Matt Sugden]

Well depending on the machine the render times take between 12-20 minutes. The recent sequences have been very heavily animated construction movies, cranes moving constantly, walls being built etc.. so I have to render every frame at the moment anyway, but I get the impression from this thread that the anim prepass is a way to 'smooth out' individual irradiance maps and get a no flickering solution.

 

I guess this is only going to help me out if it works well with a medium preset, as set to high (which is what I do at the moment) there is very little flickering anyway, but obviously at the cost of render time.

 

going back to the idea of compositing, it's something I considered, but to be honest I didn't have time to plan the camera paths enough for this to benefit me, as the camera is also always moving as well!!

 

As someone said, really the render times aren't too bad, as I do around 1000 frame chunks at a time and render during the 24 hours while I do the work for the next 1000 frame chunk, it's just a bit of a killer when you have to re-render because you've got a setting wrong, or messed something up!

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

 

http://www.trinity3d.com/tutorials/vray/blending_irradiance_maps/index.shtml

 

 

this is a nice solution.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

i think there is a general lack of understanding of what a stored irradiance file is. to better understand, open your irradiance map with the irradiance map viewer. what you will see is that the irradiance map is essentially a 3dmap that contains light values, and color tones. you will be able to make out the shape of your model, and all of the individual elements in it. you can spin the map and see that is is truly 3d, and it fits directly onto your model.

 

now, if you move something in your model, the map is no longer valid because the map is expecting it to be in a certain place, and it is not there. there is no information for the new position of your object.

 

this is why, if you have moving object, you need to calculate a irradiance map for every scene, regardless of whether it is precalc'd, or calc'd at the time of rendering.

 

the reason people tell you to use brute force is because the lighting solution may vary from frame to frame, causing it to look bad. i have done animations with moving object in the past using a calc'd at the time of rendering irradiance map, and a calc'd at the time of rendering light cache, and had it look good. ...but this does not mean it is going to work for your situation.

 

another solution, though i have never used it, would be to remove your moving objects from the GI calculation's all together, and let it render the space with GI, but your object without GI.

[chow choppe]

Well explained travis. Please see my queries in bold

 

i think there is a general lack of understanding of what a stored irradiance file is. to better understand, open your irradiance map with the irradiance map viewer. what you will see is that the irradiance map is essentially a 3dmap that contains light values, and color tones. you will be able to make out the shape of your model, and all of the individual elements in it. you can spin the map and see that is is truly 3d, and it fits directly onto your model.

 

now, if you move something in your model, the map is no longer valid because the map is expecting it to be in a certain place, and it is not there. there is no information for the new position of your object.

 

this is why, if you have moving object, you need to calculate a irradiance map for every scene, regardless of whether it is precalc'd, or calc'd at the time of rendering.

 

the reason people tell you to use brute force is because the lighting solution may vary from frame to frame, causing it to look bad. i have done animations with moving object in the past using a calc'd at the time of rendering irradiance map, and a calc'd at the time of rendering light cache, and had it look good. ...but this does not mean it is going to work for your situation.

 

another solution, though i have never used it, would be to remove your moving objects from the GI calculation's all together, and let it render the space with GI, but your object without GI. I have seen a alot of people saying about rendering moving and non moving objects in different passes. but dont know how to do that and especially how to put them together in After efects. never found a tutorial also for doing that. And how to exclude an object from GI, by going to object properties in system tab and unchecking receive GI?

 

Also is it alwyas? a good practice to render the animations at highjer size and then compress the animation later to lower size to have better results

 

thanks

[visions]

any update on the post above

"another solution, though i have never used it, would be to remove your moving objects from the GI calculation's all together, and let it render the space with GI, but your object without GI. I have seen a alot of people saying about rendering moving and non moving objects in different passes. but dont know how to do that and especially how to put them together in After efects. never found a tutorial also for doing that. And how to exclude an object from GI, by going to object properties in system tab and unchecking receive GI?"

 

Vivek

[Nic H]

The best way Iv found is to render moving objects seperately using vray matte properties (-1, affect alpha / shadows ticked) and comp them together in after effects, fusion etc. Its alot easier to change / add bits later this way and quicker to render.

 

I have had no luck with animation pre-pass mode its slow and shit and lacks flexibility when you do everything in one pass. with separate passes you can get away with lower IMAP settings for the moving camera stuff (baked GI) and then use the higher IMAP settings for moving objects (single frame GI)

[chow choppe]

nicnic can u elaborate that method of vray matte

[Matt Sugden]

well I've been messing around with this now on another new project for a couple of weeks, again revisiting animated objects.

 

I have to say I'm really not pleased with my result in vray. I rendered, re-rendered, changed so many settings, frame times up in the 30-40 mins a frame, and it's a noisy flickery result, which I'm a little embarrassed to give to my client. It's a very testing process, as I have about 4000 frames of anim, with varying lighting conditions for each room, finding out the result is bad is costing me too much project time.

 

I don't know if it's the lighting I'm using which is wrong, a combination of max spots and vray areas, or whether it is my AA settings or my irr map settings. But the lighting solution is so unpredictable. Maybe I've just not got my material settings right?. I have white hot spots appearing and disappearing intermittently, but only in very specific points of the anim, blotchy shadow areas which happen in some parts of the room but then disappear in others, and as far as I can see my settings are almost top whack and putting them any higher is in serious danger of making the render times impractical.

 

AAaaarghh!!!

[Guest andremarca]

I would love to ear an answer to Bewdys question since i'm having the same problem... :| :| :|