Mental Ray settings, 3d animated text, FG splotches?

[Tommy L]

Studio/Institution: Joey Bluebird Studio
Client: nda
Genre: Other
Software: Max 2010 / MR
Website: http://www.joeybluebird.com
Description:

Just the camera moves. The splotches you see do not move. I am in the dark a bit when it comes to FG settings...

I dont really know whats going on during render time when you see the multiple images come up in the buffer.

Anyway, my settings are attached, Id appreciate anyone pointing out my dufussness.

 

The scene is lit by just a skylight. There are 120 frames.

 

Thanks,

Tom.

[odouble]

Just the camera moves. The splotches you see do not move. I am in the dark a bit when it comes to FG settings...

I dont really know whats going on during render time when you see the multiple images come up in the buffer.

Anyway, my settings are attached, Id appreciate anyone pointing out my dufussness.

 

The scene is lit by just a skylight. There are 120 frames.

 

Thanks,

Tom.

 

 

No dufusness here at all... Right now you are pretty much Brute forcing since the "Interpolate Over Num. FG Points" is 0. There's nothing wrong with the settings except that I'm sure you are getting some pretty long render times. To clean up the splotches/noise with the method you are using, you would have to continue to increase the "Initial FG point density" and "Rays per FG Point". Both would in turn skyrocket your render times.

 

I would uncheck FG point Interpolation. It is the old way of setting up FG. Use the low or medium FG Precision Preset (I often use draft even for production animations). You can leave your "Diffuse Bounces" at 0 since you can always brighten or adjust your gamma in post. Noise filtering could also be left at none. Also change your Fg projection setting to "Project FG From Camera Position (Best for Stills). Autodesk labels it "best for stills" but you get better quality FG for animations with this method. It was the only method of projecting FG in 3ds Max until the new "camera position" option was added in 2010 (I hardly/never use that option).

 

As for your caching settings, they look fine. I'm sure you switch "from incrementally add..." to "Read FG points Only..." for your final renders.

 

Test the animations with these settings and post the results.

Edited August 8, 2010 by odouble

[Tommy L]

Excellent, just the response I was hoping for, thanks.

[Tommy L]

I ended up going with these settings, its calculating the FG now. Its taking quite long to render, about 20 mins a frame on an i7, but Ive got the time so Im not concerned.

[Cyberstyle]

You can and probably should also set the fall off distance on the final gather. It will help to reduce your time.

There's no point in shooting rays out into infinity, so go to the FG rollout and you will see a check box

for "Use Falloff (limits ray distance)". Just like clipping planes or decay etc... you can set a min and max distance value.

[Justin Hunt]

Density of 10 is very high so yes it will take a long time to calculate.

Also why drop the wieght? aren't you in effect telling the fg to only use 75% of the samples, or am I misunderstanding what weight does?

I personally would increase the interpolation, heck youve got alot of samples to play with.

 

With the calculate FG from camera path I have found that the density has to be high and it helps alot by increasing the rendering resolution X3 OR X4 to make the divisions larger and get enough detail. This methode works best for sweeping camera moves.

 

Be careful if your going to use the fall off distance as it does affect the light alot and can become difficult to control.

 

jhv

[Tommy L]

I am eventually going to make an animation where the camera sweeps all over a ground plane with lots of text (spoof title sequence, hence the Bustin Gingercake) so 'sweeping pan' is a good description of the shots.

 

I heard that the 'weight' is how much the second bounce affects the levels. So .5 would give 2 x deeper shadows.

[Justin Hunt]

AH OK, so in effect is it taking energy away from the fg bounce? Kind of dampening it down?

 

Sounds like a fun squence, you might even get away with using 0 FG bounces, or is the colour bleeding important for the look?

 

jvh

[Tommy L]

AH OK, so in effect is it taking energy away from the fg bounce? Kind of dampening it down?

 

Sounds like a fun squence, you might even get away with using 0 FG bounces, or is the colour bleeding important for the look?

 

jvh

 

I tried with 0 bounces but it looked really dark between the letters. Im getting some strange shadow artifacts now, I think Im going to ditch the HDRI and just tweak the skylight.

 

Also, I left a sequence to render over noght and it all saved out blank? Just white tiffs. But it looked fine in the frame window. Nevermind, still a ways to go.

 

BTW, Ive found this site very helpful: http://www.polygonblog.com/ especially for a Mental Ray beginner.

[mattclinch]

some strange settings there. cranked up way to high.

 

i would go with something like..

 

FG point density - 0.4

Rays per FG point - 250

Interpolate over no. of FG points - 60-75

 

Diffuse bounces - 3-4

Weight - 1

[Tommy L]

some strange settings there. cranked up way to high.

 

i would go with something like..

 

FG point density - 0.4

Rays per FG point - 250

Interpolate over no. of FG points - 60-75

 

Diffuse bounces - 3-4

Weight - 1

 

OK, and do I use the 'calculate every 5 frames' option, oir is that why I was getting noise before? Maybe I need to blur my HDRI?

[mattclinch]

you were getting noise before because you were using an exceptionally high density of FG points, but smoothing over only 50 of them. the higher the density, the smaller the area covered by those 50 points = more blotchiness.

using lower density of points and smoothing over slightly more will give you a much smoother solution - the default low/medium settings are pretty good.

 

unless your HDRI is exceptionally large and detailed, i wouldn't think you'd need to blur it.

[odouble]

you were getting noise before because you were using an exceptionally high density of FG points, but smoothing over only 50 of them. the higher the density, the smaller the area covered by those 50 points = more blotchiness.

using lower density of points and smoothing over slightly more will give you a much smoother solution - the default low/medium settings are pretty good.

 

unless your HDRI is exceptionally large and detailed, i wouldn't think you'd need to blur it.

 

Couldn't have put it better. The default low and medium settings work great for FG. I hardly go over 150 rays per FG points for production animations.

[Justin Hunt]

Yes calculate every 5th ,or even more, this will also help smooth out the lighting by blending or interpolating between the calculated frames.

Also rather than dropping the weight to darken the shadows use exposure control.

 

jhv

[Justin Hunt]

BTW, Ive found this site very helpful: http://www.polygonblog.com/ especially for a Mental Ray beginner.

 

Interesting blog, I had a quick look at the mentalray tut, I must say I dont quite agree with everything he does. Its not wrong, just not the most efficient way. I also dont understand why he dropped the glare shader into the environment slot when the actual glare "volumetric" is being produced by the Glare lense shader.

 

He uses an increased multiplier on the portal and many fg bounces light to brighten the scence rather than exposure control.

 

Still not a bad tutorial, and another blog to add to the list.

 

jhv

[Tommy L]

I must say, its really nice to be using MR. I have set up an office at home (baby boy) and havent figured my licence sharing for Vray. So I figured Id just do this project in MR from home. Its been a real breath of fresh air.

 

Anyway, I have extended the movie to 1200 frames and Im now waiting for everything to render. Ill post a video when its done.

Thanks All!

Tom.

[Tommy L]

...if Im using motion blur, do I have to motion blur the FG map, or do I just turn it on to render the frames with the precalced FG map?

[odouble]

...if Im using motion blur, do I have to motion blur the FG map, or do I just turn it on to render the frames with the precalced FG map?

You can just turn it on when you render the frames

[Justin Hunt]

For nice quick motion blur try the "HDR image motion blur" shader in the camera shaders ->output

 

Being a post production blur its not perfect but I think it will be more than good enough for what you are doing.

 

jhv

[Tommy L]

Thanks Justin, good tip.

One other thing...

My FG map is 400mb over 1000 frames, which seems reasonable. There is a time overhead for loading this over the network, if I 'include maps' in BB, does this take the FG map to the node, cache it, and stop the node transferring it from the server every frame? Or does it make no difference?

[Tommy L]

Here's a link to progress. Im upping the settings and re-rendering. Im going to change the content also, I love the play on words Justin Timberlake to Bustin Gingercake (sounds like slang for spending the night with a redhead) but the piece doesnt work as a whole yet.

http://vimeo.com/14071936

[Justin Hunt]

Yes there will be a little overhead on transfering the FG map, but once its transfered its fine. I dont often use "Include maps" because it can take forever to transfer and sometimes fail if the transfer file is too big. Personally I perfer having a good clean file structure that all the machines can see.

 

Vimeo is blocked at work so I'll have to watch it tonight at home

 

jhv

[mattclinch]

love it. very nicely done, especially the camera movement. my only critique is that you dolly back quickly to reveal the names/titles, but with the first and last letters are cutoff, and the slow dolly back after that then shows the full name but only momentarily, not really giving you a chance to read the full word. hope that makes sense.

[Dave Buckley]

looking good, agree with what matt said.

 

also must say i wanted the hair test video to be longer, gotta admit a little chuckle came out

[TSuess]

Tom,

 

I've used this as a guide to understand what's going on "under the hood" w/ final gather and GI. Check it out. It may help. http://http://www.kxcad.net/autodesk/3ds_max/Autodesk_3ds_Max_9_Tutorials/tut_final_gather_and_ambient_occlusion.html