Surface Flicker, Warp and Wobble

[ryanjohnson]

The surfaces from these images flicker, warp and wobble when I look at the final render from a turntable. My version: Maya 2012, MR 3.9

 

 

LEFT PANEL: Final Gathering settings; RIGHT PANEL: SubD Preview levels

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

how many lights are you using?, can you try a simple 3 point light set up instead of one with GI?

is you still want to use FG you'll need to pre save FG samples every X frames, since your object is rotation I guess it will be very often, that's why I recommend to do a noFG light system.

The flick are not because your model but is the FG that is calculated different every frame.

 

BTW nice model.

[ryanjohnson]

Hi Francicso. Thanks!

 

How do you save out samples every few frames? Makes sense. I don't like the results of 3 point lighting. Plus, I don't feel I have much control over the soft shadowing effect.

 

I'm using MR with image based lighting. The famous KitchenLightProbe.hdr from the HDR shop.

Edited November 13, 2012 by ryanjohnson

[Francisco Penaloza]

Long time since I used Maya but what I remember (if they have not changed) if you want your model just to spin around, in FG Gathering map where it says rebuild, set it up to "Off" and then you can do it manually or automatic, you can render frame 0 then spin your model to frame 10 and render again then to frame 30 and render again and so on, with this what FG gather does is save the previews FG solution and merged in a 3D environment with the next one, so you are kind of warping up your model with FG samples, then when you are done, you set the rebuild to "freeze" and render your animation, if you get dark areas in your model, you need to change it to off and render again that frame and so on until you get a nice uniform animation.

 

The other way is to set up your animation to render every 10 frames or so with rebuild OFF, then Freeze your FG and render full animation.

depending how complex is your model and length of animation with be the number of frames that you'll need to pre render, it is a try an error really, that's why 3 point lighting work better for this simple animation, or even complex ones, ask Pixar about it

Area light with soft shadows can give you a nice lighting.

but give a try to the FG and let us know how that works.

[ryanjohnson]

Thanks Francisco. I will definitely check out those settings. I'll also try a 3 point, with area lights. Thre seems to be a good solution by Remydrh on the Mental Forums: http://forum.mentalimages.com/showthread.php?6603-HDR-Light-Blobs/page3

Edited November 13, 2012 by ryanjohnson