executive wing animation

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Just so I understand this (I'm trying to figure this out for future animations using VRay) - you pre-calc'd 8 Irradiance maps, each of which took about ten hours to finish - you had to run them on idividual machines because there's no DR for Irradiance maps (yet). Then you ran your animation using the "from file" mode to load and use those pre-cal'd ir maps.

Have you tried using the "multiframe incremental" mode where each server would render and refine it's own irradiance map?

 

Here's another link to help others unravel irradianc mapping:

 

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/VRayHelp150beta/tutorials_imap1.htm

the spot3d tutorial more or less describes what i did, only it used several camera, and i used one animated one.

 

the 8 irradiance maps are actually 8 individual animation passes. each animation pass has its own irradiance map. i set the incremental frame render to 20, and told it to render frames 1 to 1000. the first irradiance render took awhile, because it was generating all of the information from scratch. the camera moves ahead on the animation path 20 frames, and adds any missing information to the irradiance map that it needs to rende that frame. this additional information does not take nearly as long as the original information to calculate. the when it renders all of the irradaince samples it automatically saves the file o the server, because i have autosave turned on.

 

typically i render a irradiance map every 20 frames, and have not had a problem yet. it all depends on how fast you camera movement is. because my camera paths are slow, and do not move to drastically, i want to try every 30 frames,and see if i can get away with that.

[Ernest Burden III]

i used a 22mm lens, which gives a 78.6 degree view angle. it gives a slight distrotion, but not to bad. i typically use camera angles in this range.

 

In still rendering I usually start with 72 degrees, will go to 85 degs. if I need to, especially interior. But lately I have been taking a fresh look at narrower angles.

 

In animation I won't go above the 72 d, but less may be more.

 

I ask because I was looking at a book I have, and mentioned recently, "Shot By Shot" by director Steve Katz. In it he mentions some commonly used lenses with certain film aspect ratio's. The mm rating is useless without converting to 35mm convention, but angles are angles. He says common for WIDEST-ANGLE are d (degrees) of:

1:1.33 (TV) 53d x 41d

1:1.85 (Cinema widescreen) 48d x 26d

1:2.35 (Panavision, anamorphic widescreen) 83d x 41d

 

Except for the Panavision, those are considerably narrower than what most of us are using.

 

I will have to try running some frames with those sorts of view-angles to see if I like it any better. I know I don't like them for stills, and most of us set up key-frames as stills and may not be really thinking cinematically.

[Ernest Burden III]

the irradiance maps took about 35 hours to calculate on a dual xeon with 1 gig of ram. after that, the frames to an average of 7 minutes each. the were processed on my pseudo rendering farm using pentium 4, 2.4 ghz and a 1 gig of ram. the rendering farm consits of the drafting machines at night.

 

Not to be boasting, just comparing notes and looking into my probable future--I get rendered frames at about half those numbers with Lightscape. Take for example the animation of the ship (not posted), with a complex scene like this http://www.acmedigital.com/TIH-DCL/frame06.jpg rendered in the sub-4 minute range on Athlon 2.4s (after about 12 hours of radiosity calculating) at 720 x 480.

 

The exterior in my current WIP is more like 1 minute per frame and less.

 

But then Vray and Cinema can do so much more with shading and rendering, that the comparison is only good for so much.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Not to be boasting, just comparing notes and looking into my probable future--I get rendered frames at about half those numbers with Lightscape. Take for example the animation of the ship (not posted), with a complex scene like this http://www.acmedigital.com/TIH-DCL/frame06.jpg rendered in the sub-4 minute range on Athlon 2.4s (after about 12 hours of radiosity calculating) at 720 x 480.

 

The exterior in my current WIP is more like 1 minute per frame and less.

 

But then Vray and Cinema can do so much more with shading and rendering, that the comparison is only good for so much.

i think a experienced user would be able to dramatically improve on my times, not sure if they would compare to lightscape. i am still trying to learn how to use the software effeciently.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

In still rendering I usually start with 72 degrees, will go to 85 degs. if I need to, especially interior. But lately I have been taking a fresh look at narrower angles.

 

In animation I won't go above the 72 d, but less may be more.

 

I ask because I was looking at a book I have, and mentioned recently, "Shot By Shot" by director Steve Katz. In it he mentions some commonly used lenses with certain film aspect ratio's. The mm rating is useless without converting to 35mm convention, but angles are angles. He says common for WIDEST-ANGLE are d (degrees) of:

1:1.33 (TV) 53d x 41d

1:1.85 (Cinema widescreen) 48d x 26d

1:2.35 (Panavision, anamorphic widescreen) 83d x 41d

 

Except for the Panavision, those are considerably narrower than what most of us are using.

 

I will have to try running some frames with those sorts of view-angles to see if I like it any better. I know I don't like them for stills, and most of us set up key-frames as stills and may not be really thinking cinematically.

hmmm... that is quiet a bit of difference. i have used camera angle that low, but typically only when i am trying to perpsective match. ...what about architectural photographers. the shots you see in 'architecture' magazine for example. do you know what angle they use?

[Ernest Burden III]

...what about architectural photographers. the shots you see in 'architecture' magazine for example. do you know what angle they use?

 

Those would more likely be in 72 degree or more range. That's fairly typical for both architectural photography and rendering--but apparently not cinema. So it makes me wonder if it is wrong to assume that we can just pull our usual angles into animation and it will be fine. People have certain built-in expectations from moving pictures, I wonder if it would be better to fit within them or strike out on a new path?