First Vray Animation

[Rconce01]

Guys,

I am doing my first exterior animation, 800 x600 pixels and 600 frames . What settings should I use in Vray to minimize my render time in the scene. I have used vray for still renderings but for animations I suppose the settings are different so you don’t spend a month rendering. I am running a precesion dual xeon 3.0 ghz with 4 gd of ram. The scene is small it’s a 4 story office building.

[STRAT]

no moving bits? just camera animation? if it is, then i'd use a precached IR + LC GI solutions rendered at 1/2 size the final output resolution.

[Rconce01]

no moving bits? just camera animation? if it is, then i'd use a precached IR + LC GI solutions rendered at 1/2 size the final output resolution.

Everything will stay still, just camera animation. So I do an irradiance map as my primary bounce engine and light cache as the secondary. When oyu say a precached Irradiance map, how do I get it precached, I don’t see that option. Why do you say to render at half the output size? I need it on the screen at 800 x 600 so you mean I should render at 400 x 300…. Then what I resize it in premeire?

thanks

[BrianKitts]

I would give this tut a read through. It will give you a better understanding of what to do.

 

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150R1/tutorials_imap2.htm

[Rconce01]

I would give this tut a read through. It will give you a better understanding of what to do.

 

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150R1/tutorials_imap2.htm

 

 

i would gues that three step method is well worth the time

 

thanks

[BrianKitts]

i would gues that three step method is well worth the time

 

thanks

Yes... it's partially about the time....

 

But the main reason to do it is to create a constant GI solution throughout the entire animation.

 

If you were to calculate the GI on every frame on a renderfarm by multiple computers you would end up if minor small differences between frames that wouldn't be noticed in a still, but would cause noticeable jumping/flickering in your GI for an animation.

[Rconce01]

Yes... it's partially about the time....

 

But the main reason to do it is to create a constant GI solution throughout the entire animation.

 

If you were to calculate the GI on every frame on a renderfarm by multiple computers you would end up if minor small differences between frames that wouldn't be noticed in a still, but would cause noticeable jumping/flickering in your GI for an animation.

 

 

great man thanks i;ll let you know how it goes!

[Rconce01]

Ok well i created the light cache with 3000 samples and .02 sample size for a 600 frame exterior scene, now the calculation of the multiframe incremental irradiance map part is taking forever with it set to every 10th frame and the quality set to medium. if i calculate the irradiance map at half the resolution like 400 x 300 will it speed things up? how about changing the quality to low?

[BrianKitts]

Ok well i created the light cache with 3000 samples and .02 sample size for a 600 frame exterior scene, now the calculation of the multiframe incremental irradiance map part is taking forever with it set to every 10th frame and the quality set to medium. if i calculate the irradiance map at half the resolution like 400 x 300 will it speed things up? how about changing the quality to low?

 

Make sure you have "don't render image" selected in your global settings, and you can cut the res in half if you want, but I wouldn't cut the quality down, unless you've done test renders and know that your scene looks okay with the lower settings.

 

What exactly are you calling "taking forever" Typically my animations take about 10 mins a frame to calculate at worst case scenario settings. Depending on the speed of your camera you can get away with doing 15,20 or even sometimes 30 for your nth Framing. Which for a 600 frame animation means only 20 frames for your IRR.

 

Even with pretty high settings I'm normally around 10 mins per frame for an irr calc, so I would normally expect a couple of hours to calculate the irradiance map.

 

Also make sure you do the light cache first and then set that to "From file" in your secondary so that the irradiance can use that info to speed up it's own work.

[Rconce01]

sorry about the forever, i meant about 13 min per frame set to low which is fairly ok quality, when i figure every 10th frame thats 60 frames at 780 min which is 13hrs just for the IR map calulation. i do have dont render final image selected to save time and i will try dropping the res. i already have the light cache to read from file while my IR is being calculated. will it matter if the light cache was created at double the res of the IR map? Also if the process is stopped can the computer pick up where is left off or is it a one shot deal. The reason i ask is because i noticed there is no progressive autosave option for the light cache or IR Map. You only get one chance to save the file at the end.

 

For the final render should i use both files i created or just the IR map for the primary and none for the secondary, i ask beacause the IR map was created based on the light cache file?

 

thanks again,

ralph

 

this isn't for a client this is for a class project so i really don't need anything exceptional and yes there is a significant level of glass and reflections

 

 

 

 

 

Ok well i created the light cache with 3000 samples and .02 sample size for a 600 frame exterior scene, now the calculation of the multiframe incremental irradiance map part is taking forever with it set to every 10th frame and the quality set to medium. if i calculate the irradiance map at half the resolution like 400 x 300 will it speed things up? how about changing the quality to low?

 

 

 

 

Make sure you have "don't render image" selected in your global settings, and you can cut the res in half if you want, but I wouldn't cut the quality down, unless you've done test renders and know that your scene looks okay with the lower settings.

 

What exactly are you calling "taking forever" Typically my animations take about 10 mins a frame to calculate at worst case scenario settings. Depending on the speed of your camera you can get away with doing 15,20 or even sometimes 30 for your nth Framing. Which for a 600 frame animation means only 20 frames for your IRR.

 

Even with pretty high settings I'm normally around 10 mins per frame for an irr calc, so I would normally expect a couple of hours to calculate the irradiance map.

 

Also make sure you do the light cache first and then set that to "From file" in your secondary so that the irradiance can use that info to speed up it's own work.

[BrianKitts]

I'm pretty sure that for stills...since the light cache information is used to build the Irradiance map, technically you could turn your secondary off when you do your final render since the information is now embedded in the stored promary. That is unless you are using light cache to calculate your glossy reflections.... in which case you'll still want the lightcache info.

 

But when it comes to animations, I've never done any testing on it, the way I see it is it's already calculated, all you are really going to gain by turning it off is the load time and amount of memory used, so maybe a gain of a dozen seconds??? not really worth changing it up, I would just leave them on.

 

 

13 mins really isn't that bad.... Unless your scene is pretty simple, you may want to consider posting up your render settings, you may have something else in the equation that could be optimized.

[Rconce01]

alright i will.

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure that for stills...since the light cache information is used to build the Irradiance map, technically you could turn your secondary off when you do your final render since the information is now embedded in the stored promary. That is unless you are using light cache to calculate your glossy reflections.... in which case you'll still want the lightcache info.

 

But when it comes to animations, I've never done any testing on it, the way I see it is it's already calculated, all you are really going to gain by turning it off is the load time and amount of memory used, so maybe a gain of a dozen seconds??? not really worth changing it up, I would just leave them on.

 

 

13 mins really isn't that bad.... Unless your scene is pretty simple, you may want to consider posting up your render settings, you may have something else in the equation that could be optimized.