Animation techniques/ tips

[Tim Nelson]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm working with an architect who is proposing to do a 2-3 minute exterior & interior animation for an upcoming project. I've only done one architectural animation before but I feel confident I can pull this one off.

 

So, coming from somebody who has little animation experience, can anybody give me some insight on the process they use to do arch. animations. Or is there a good resource somewhere that I can learn from. Any books?

 

I plan on using Viz4 and Vray to do the project.

[Ernest Burden III]

I'm working with an architect who is proposing to do a 2-3 minute exterior & interior animation for an upcoming project.

Work backwards. How long will that take you to render? At 30 fps you are talking about 5K frames. If you can get a per-frame rendertime of average 3 minutes that will take 250 CPU hours. Rendering a complex scene out of Lightscape I can get that as an average, but some parts take 6 minutes or more, while some can run at about 1 minute--it varies with raybounces, aa settings and such. Do a test on a similar scene if you can, run a very short sequence and average your times. I like to render to 720 x 480 (NTSC 16:9 widescreen) usually, but 4:3 is much easier to deal with later.

 

So 250 CPU hours is 10 days on one machine, 1 day on 25 machines. What will you have available (remember that you cannot work on a machine that is at 100% crunching frames)?

 

It takes time to program camera paths, I like lots of simple paths instead of one or a few complex camera moves.

 

Storyboard your project--can you REALLY see all you want to in 2 - 3 minutes without flying around at jet speeds.

 

Don't bid too low--animations can be a lot of work.

[Tim Nelson]

Thanks Ernest.

 

If I end up getting the animation job, I'm pretty sure I'll invest in a new cpu. I remember you said you got a BOXX. How is it working for you?

 

Your work is very stylized and post processed - I love your renderings. When you do animations how do you quickly apply the same process to each frame? I know you can do actions in Photoshop, but I wouldn't know how to make something that would open, process, save and close each file for me. Can you give me any hints?

[nisus]

I know you can do actions in Photoshop, but I wouldn't know how to make something that would open, process, save and close each file for me. Can you give me any hints?

Batch Processing... File / Automate / Batch

 

Or is there a good resource somewhere that I can learn from. Any books?

No books available on this I'm afraid (and I've been looking for these for years...)

Some real examples might help you out though:

AniMotionS - architectural animations

 

rgds

 

nisus

[Ernest Burden III]

If I end up getting the animation job, I'm pretty sure I'll invest in a new cpu. I remember you said you got a BOXX. How is it working for you?

Fantastic, and I bought it with the advance for a big animation job.

 

I did one a few weeks ago, had it running on two PCs for many days while I completed the last model and camera paths on my third, then left all three going and went to Vermont for the weekend (act of faith--no crashes).

 

I know you can do actions in Photoshop, but I wouldn't know how to make something that would open, process, save and close each file for me. Can you give me any hints?

It's extremely easy to create a Photoshop action. I could talk you through it in a few minutes. I used only one action for this last animation (3:30), the one before was several, run on several versions of each frame then composited as layers in AfterEffects--a nightmare. The one action way was a lot easier.

 

In short, if you can creat a series of steps in Photoshop to get a look you want to use, you can use it to process animation frames as a batch. And some effects can be done by AfterEffects or Premiere when you compile your movie.

[Tim Nelson]

Thanks Nisus - I think that answered my question.

 

I wonder how good of a deal the BOXX's are for the money. Could I take the same spec's for one of those machines and have my friend purchase and assemble it all for much less? I haven't started looking into that yet. I can see the appeal of just ordering a whole unit for a bunch of reasons, but right now money has a lot to do with it too. If I can get a similar machine built for a lot less, then I think I would rather do that.

[Chad Warner]

I think the biggest difference between buying a system complete from a retailer vs building one yourself is how long you can wait for it to be fixed (depending on the problem of course) I'm not sure about boxx, but I know with dell, when something breaks, they have a part the next day, and if I need it, someone to install the part. That is not always the case with a homemade machine. To me, that is well worth the extra money I might pay for a pre-built machine.

 

-Chad

[Tiny Piney]

Ernest is right you have to budget our time and your polygon count those are THE most important parts of an animation project. If you are using a gi effect that takes over 6 to 7 min to render, you might have to use standard lights instead. Only show detail where detail is needed. Sometimes you can show a rail, as a square if is not in the foreground.

 

Network rendering is an animations best friend. If you have access to multiple computers use them. I would try a dry run of a very simply animation to get a handle the whole process. NetRen can be a beast in into itself. Especially the more plugin you have and different type of computers that are running.

 

Ernest is also right about not make the camera path a one long. The most successful animations I have seen are ones that are shorter clip edited together. I would even consider using still images.

[mbr]

I agree about comping a bunch of smaller animations. You can show much more without looking at a wall as the camera pans :-/

The last animations I did I made sure to test the scenes as I built them up, with lights, shadows, reflections, etc., to find an acceptable time and still looked good. I opted not to use Final Render and went with a million omnis. It was reliable, although a pain to set up.

Test the Vray animations. I have yet to see too many places that successfully do animations with GI (maybe I am looking in the wrong places?). They are out there, but things like reflections can cause unacceptable flickering (in my short tests), so plan on practicing to get it down.

 

Get the Boxx or a Dell, having a machine that will work, or they'll fix it the next day, is a savior if you run into a problem. I always recommend the refurbished Dells. My dual 2.2 is great and like new (the fan on the graphic card went out and it was replaced within 24 hrs, and I live in the middle of nowhere).

 

Good luck.

[Ernest Burden III]

I have yet to see too many places that successfully do animations with GI (maybe I am looking in the wrong places

I render out of Lightscape--works great, no artifacts, baked GI (meaning no moving lights allowed, just the camera can move).

 

Next will be animation via C4D--they claim their v8.5 doesn't flicker in GI animation--I hoope not.

 

If Vray or whatever you want to render frames has a command-line DOS window sort of option use it--it saves BIG time, and almost eliminates crashes since there are no display drivers used. If only we could live without display drivers...

[mbr]

Except us folk that never saw a minute of DOS would be lost forever!

 

I know Final Render Stage-1 has Hyper GI, which is made specifically for animations, but I've yet to use it or see examples. Soon, I hope.

[tcorbett]

I definitely have to agree with the suggestion of splitting the animation into chunks. You can composite these at the end with a video program such as Premiere, or even the free movie programs that come with the Windows or Mac platforms are effective (after all, you're probably just fading between clips)

 

This also works well because you can intersperse your development - model your interior during the day, while your exteriors render overnight.

 

For my first animation project, I thought it would take 2 weeks, so I doubled that for the estimate, and it still took me 3 months.

 

The three best pieces of advice I can give:

 

1) There's going to be a lot of trial and error - remember, it doesn't have to be perfect.

 

2) You memory constraints will kick your butt. Buy as much as you can afford, and have a second hard drive. Render your frames as image sequences so you can fix artifacts quickly. And write those images to the second hard drive to preserve your virtual memory.

 

3) Learn how to use network rendering. Even if you don't have any other computers hooked up, having your jobs queued makes you more productive, with less babysitting.

 

I haven't come across any books on animation, but I am 1/3rd through one on lighting that I would recommend - "Essential CG Lighting Techniques" by Darren Brooker. Found it at B&N, and so far it's pretty good - methods for things like dramatic lighting and fakiosity that might have saved me a lot of time I wasted trying to perfect my GI settings, not to mention rendering times.

 

Good luck!

[Tim Nelson]

These are all great comments so far. I'd love to hear more.

[mbr]

When you start testing, render a few dozen frames. I was shocked to see that mine, at 640x480, was taking 8 minutes to render. That was with very little reflections, but there were about 250 omnis casting soft shadows.

Then when I started rendering the sequence (and not isolated images), the first frames would render at 8 minutes, then it would drop down to about 1.5 minutes! Crazy, I just assume it had to do with the soft shadows and memory, but it was a very pleasant surprise. I had already wasted considerable amounts of time trying to optimize, though.

 

Here are a few of the versions that were to be put online for marketing (it's all Flash).

 

http://www.mbrstudios.com/clients/berlin/anim_A/anim_A_bedLib_320.html

http://www.mbrstudios.com/clients/berlin/anim_A/anim_A_bed02_320.html

http://www.mbrstudios.com/clients/berlin/anim_A/anim_A_BedMB_320.html

 

These were pretty much the first interior animations I've done.

 

They loop and I never got to finish them, so no controls, either (long, bad story that's still in the process).

[John Dollus]

Watch your camera motion curves. Use easing of the curves to prevent viewer whiplash. Oh, and if your view requires 180 degree turn, use more than one camera and transition between them.

[tcorbett]

One more tip:

 

Render a tiny preview version of your animation to test your camera paths and overall light quality.

 

I render my scene at 80x60, and only render every second or sometimes fourth frame. Also, if I'm using radiosity, I turn the quality WAY down. After your lunch/meeting/whatever, open the sequence with RAM player, and resize it to 640x480, and adjust the frame rate accordingly.

 

The final result is an animation that is blurry and possibly a little choppy, but you can get a good sense for the speed and framing of your camera.

[Tim Nelson]

What have you guys found to be the best for exterior landscaping? I'm used to adding all of it in post production, but with an animation i won't be able to get away with that. Does anybody have any good desert landscape solutions?

[STRAT]

Originally posted by Ernest Burden:

 

Next will be animation via C4D--they claim their v8.5 doesn't flicker in GI animation--I hoope not.

 

it doesn't flicker anyway. what they claim for 8.5 is GI flicker-free object animation.

 

I'm still to upgrade from 8.2

8.5 been sitting on my desk here for last couple of weeks. trouble is i'm half way through a project and last thing you should do is upgrade in middle of a job.

 

[ December 17, 2003, 08:38 AM: Message edited by: STRAT ]