Stable Animation Video..

[Sherif Massoud]

Hi,

 

I'm posting interior animation test at this link:

 

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/524149/Test-1-avi.html

 

I found some movements for the shadows outlines during the 3 sec. video and also

the lower opening edge!!

 

I'm attaching the prepass & rendering settings, please check them.

 

I hope to tell me what I have to do to get stable animation video with stable lines

though I get rid from most flickering problem especially after using DMC with high

settings and raising LC subd. and lowering Interp. sample of IR but still don't get

the reasonable quality I'm hopping i.e. stable lines without movements.

 

Also, If I can get some tips to get more clear and quality animation video this will

be great and thank you very much for your time my friends..

 

Best regards..

[Devin Johnston]

I don't see any GI flickering but I do see that you may have some AA problems.

[Francisco Penaloza]

I also ca not see any GI problems, and actually your setting are pretty high for such simple animation.

I would first change the wall paper,

second slow the speed of the camera move, it is just way to fast,

third check for any double geometry or co planar faces if there is any,

then reset your settings to default and go from there.

Why are you using 64 in the pre-filter of LC???

 

Try to use a better quality texture for the floor.

[Sherif Massoud]

Devin:

Maybe AA problem but really I don't know exactly which setting? cause I did already many trials and I found that DMC is best solution especially for flickering problem, but as u saw from the animation there's some edges are moving..

 

Francisco:

Actually I'm using these settings cause I'm trying to get rid of these unstable edges..

I'll try to check your points.

For the pre-filter of LC I used it to reduce noise, what's your opinion? do you think it's not so important? or it may slow the render time?

[Morne Erasmus]

Why are you using 64 in the pre-filter of LC???

 

I find 200 - 250 smooths things out nicely

[Sherif Massoud]

Hi again,

 

I've done some other tests but unfortunately didn't get rid of these wavy moving edges.. I'll tell you what changes I did in my tests:

 

1- I put higher DMC settings max subdiv. 10 and clr threshold 0.005

2-LC subdivisions 2000

3-Interp. frames 3

4-HSph. subdiv. 90

5-I slowed the camera speed and make it focus on one wall so there is not big change in direction

6-I change the floor material to marble and improve the wall material

7-I also disable the sun and make the test in night lighten only from ceiling vray light object.

I know ofcourse that these settings are too much for only 4 sec. of simple test but though I still have these wavy moving edges so I think

the reason doesn't related to quality settings, it's other thing, but what?

Please of anybody can help me I'll be very thankfull..

Best regards,

[Devin Johnston]

Have you tried changing the AA filter?

[Francisco Penaloza]

OK Stop clicking randomly and go back to the basics. AA is different than sampling and Gi samples. First in animation you should not use any AA filter, in animation you don't want razor sharp image/frames because they create many other problems like moire and others, so a simple area filter by default or just turn it off.

If you have splotches like dark spot moving around or despairing, that's GI, low values of GI or very little light in your scene. Changing only HSph. subdiv. 90 won't fix the problem HSph. subdiv. only says how much samples may be used, the more important thing is how they are distributed in your scene, and if you have poor lighting all this is worthless.

Light cache is easy to render so 2000 samples with everything else as default should be enough. Medium animation preset for Irradiance should be good too for your scene.

IF you follow the procedure of rendering animation from Chaos group here you will get good results. Turn off all your materials setup your light the way it should be, Sun light with portals or no portals, or interior lights, whatever your goal it is. But don't think your scene is rendering bad because you are using Sun instead a light bulb; your problem is GI setup.

 

Follow the procedure of creating a pre-pass of LightCache, then otherfor Irradiance, then load those and render a test, if everything look good, then your problem is in textures, for what I saw they are very low quality, you need big size textures. Also what size is your final output?? half HD will create a more sharp image than any other little 600x600 pix test, more pixel also help to get a crisp image, as a reference for 4K movies they create over 8K map or even bigger, then when they shrink it it make it look better. I am not suggesting to render 8K it is just a reference, if your final output will be half DH (720) you need at least 2k textures, do not use those small thumbnail that come with Max or 512 pix from the internet.

[Sherif Massoud]

Thank you Francisco for your clarification, I'll check again and see if I can get better results..

Just want to know what's the good final output size? is it 800*600 or 720*486 or I have to make it bigger for example 1024*768? but sure it will take much time......other thing; is 1000*1000 texture size is good or bigger is more better?

[Francisco Penaloza]

Thank you Francisco for your clarification, I'll check again and see if I can get better results..

Just want to know what's the good final output size? is it 800*600 or 720*486 or I have to make it bigger for example 1024*768? but sure it will take much time......other thing; is 1000*1000 texture size is good or bigger is more better?

 

Your output size depend of how and where your dive will be display, TV broadcast, Computer presentations, Big screen projectors.

800x640 or 720x486 used to be most of computer standard and TV broad cast but now a day, with higher resolution monitors and TV's the minimum is half HD, 1080x720 so I would recommend use that one. Yes it will imply a little longer to render per frame but you'll get better antialising too, so it is worth it.

As mentioned before the texture size depends of your video output size and also how close they will be from the camera, 1k texture is a OK size, but that spend really, most of the time I end up using 2k or more.

[Sherif Massoud]

Very good, I'll post the result test after finish it, and ofcourse will wait your advises after that.

Best regards..

[Sherif Massoud]

Other point I want to ask about, concerning the final video output, I used to make the final video as avi format cause almost all animation I've made before was small pieces not large...but this ofcourse not safe so I'm trying now to render separate jpgs or pngs and merge them in premiere, but I didn't get good results...after going to premiere I export the video file type: microsoft avi, compressor: cinepak, pixel aspect ratio D1/DV Pal (1.067) and the quality 100%.....after these settings I got heavy file nearly 100 mb and can't be played at all and that for a very small test file only 2 boxes and 4 sec. animation length.....any suggestions will be appreciated..

[Morne Erasmus]

Hi

 

You should export it using H.264 encoding in a mp4 container. If you don't know what that is, then just use one of the HD presets for vimeo or youtube. Change the default framerate and resolution to whatever suits you

 

If you still can't figure it out, then use virtualdub (free) to import your jpg sequence then export an UNCOMPRESSED avi file. This file will be very big. Then use VLC (also free) to convert the uncompressed avi to a H.264 mp4 file (much smaller file)

[Sherif Massoud]

Thank you Morne, I'll check that and get back with the results after finish..

 

Can you tell me plz if I can in any of these softwares to add sound/texts and make transitions between different shots?

Edited May 13, 2014 by sherifmassoud

[nefertitiycan]

Hello,

 

I can not find anything useful that how to manage good animation resolution.

 

1. I change resolution to 800x600

2. My buffer image qualities are very good.

3. I save file as avi.

 

Although my buffer pictures are quality i can not take good avi document. Why the quality is different from each other?

 

Please help. Thanks

[Morne Erasmus]

Although my buffer pictures are quality i can not take good avi document. Why the quality is different from each other?

 

The same reason a jpg looks different than a png, tiff and bmp. They're made by different companies. Each has it's own idea of what a good image is and how to get to the end result. They each also have different uses in different situations.

 

Jpg uses various compression algorithms and in a nutshell you loose image quality each time you save a jpg (the file also get smaller and smaller)

Tiff is loss less which means it retains its quality for the most part.

If you look at the file size and quality of the average jpg to the file size and quality of the average tiff, you'll know what I mean.

 

Same with video encoding. You get different encoding standards and new (most of the time better) ones come out all the time. For now the best thing for the average person is H.264 in an mp4 container. You get others but I didnt mention it because we're talking "average" here.

(For example ProRes is an excellent one you get, but wont go into that now)

 

So in the old days avi with an encoding of microsoft 1 or cinepack was the "default" in max, a lot has happened since those days.

Companies are constantly innovating better ways to cram more information in files at better quality and sometimes at better compression taking into account the demand for storage etc.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Morne