Rendering 5-10,000 frame animations at 1080p

[jasond]

Hello,

 

Ok this is a massively general question but I'm hoping to get some pointers

 

My clients are starting to ask about rendering their product demo animations in 1080p as their past work was rendered at 720x480 @ 1.2 pixel aspect. This is blurry on their HD tv's.

 

1080p is a massive increase in render time. So my question is if anyone has any suggestions for rendering 5,000 - 10,000 frames in HD and not having to spend a fortune on rendering and time budgeting. Upconverting in post? Convince the client they don't need 1080p and just use 1280x720 @ 1.0 aspect?

 

I tried Red Giants' After Effects plugin Instant 4K to upconvert 720x480 to 1920 x 1080 and the results were obviously pretty blurry.

 

I'm using 3DS Max w/Mental Ray, hoping to switch to Corona.

 

Again, I know this is a broad question but appreciate any input.

 

Thanks,

Jason

[Guest dialog]

Think of taking a Single sized bed sheet and putting it on a King Size Bed... that fabric is not going to hold the original quality when being stretched that big...same goes for video. 1280x720 is decent for web based stuff. You could educate your client a bit as well...most seem to have the slightest clue on why they actually choose the things they do. Also, why 5,000-10,000 frames? Are these long drawn out walk-thoughs?

[frog_a_lot]

720x480 is a pretty low starting point..

The lowest we work on is 1280x720.. and if time is there we will go to 1080.. 1024x576 is the lowest i think i've ever produced, and that was due to time frame.

 

Eitherway.. try and render at 720 and then upscale to 1080 using a decent converter. I have no experience with Red Giants one, but most good ones should scale it up and then sharpen it up a bit.

 

Vray has the ability todo calculations at 1/2 or 1/4 size which speeds up rendering.. Mental ray may as well. Basically by doing all your precalcs at 1/2 size.

[Tommy L]

Hello,

 

Ok this is a massively general question but I'm hoping to get some pointers

 

My clients are starting to ask about rendering their product demo animations in 1080p as their past work was rendered at 720x480 @ 1.2 pixel aspect. This is blurry on their HD tv's.

 

1080p is a massive increase in render time. So my question is if anyone has any suggestions for rendering 5,000 - 10,000 frames in HD and not having to spend a fortune on rendering and time budgeting. Upconverting in post? Convince the client they don't need 1080p and just use 1280x720 @ 1.0 aspect?

 

I tried Red Giants' After Effects plugin Instant 4K to upconvert 720x480 to 1920 x 1080 and the results were obviously pretty blurry.

 

I'm using 3DS Max w/Mental Ray, hoping to switch to Corona.

 

Again, I know this is a broad question but appreciate any input.

 

Thanks,

Jason

 

This is a question for your client. Tell them what the additional render time would cost (get a quote from an online farm) then add the post production cost and see if the client still wants to do it.

These are 6 min product shots for TV? Their upload cost to the stations is going to increase a fair bit too, make sure they know that before you make the animations.

I did some TV work for Chevy and rendered it beautifully at 1080p, only to have the crush it in post because of the HD upload fee. Mine were just bookend 15s though, a little different to 10000 frames.

[jasond]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for your input, much appreciated! Animations for this client are demos showing how their products work, so lots of moving parts and camera movements. These are anywhere from a few minutes to 10+.

 

I went ahead and quoted them for 720p after convincing them 1080p would be over-the-top for both render time, cost and may not work on their demo touch screens.

 

Cameron, your suggestion to pre-calc at 1/2 the size might just work, I forgot you can do that in Mental Ray. I'd still need to calculate every frame as I can't skip with all the movement happening. I'll have to give it a try.

 

Thanks again,

Jason

[Guest dialog]

VRay 3 renders much faster than mental ray...why not make the small investment and switch to VRay.

[jasond]

@George

Would rendering some of the sequences in ink and paint be appropriate for the particular products?

Very cool rendering on your flat 3d sample, great linkage setup there! Most of my clients can do simple animations in Solidworks so they all want the full-on 3d with proper lighting, materials, etc.

 

@Desmond

VRay 3 renders much faster than mental ray...why not make the small investment and switch to VRay.

That's the next step... I just need to raise the capital before dropping $2500 to cover licensing, etc. I'll have to figure out network licensing on Amazon EC2, which is a whole other animal.

 

Jason

[notamondayfan]

Might be a good time to really look at optimising scenes too.

 

I recently did a 1080 animation, and got the render time down from 30 mins to 6 mins, without compromising quality. If I'd switched to Vray 3 it might have been even faster.

 

Ultimately if your client wants high-res, just charge them accordingly.

[jasond]

Might be a good time to really look at optimising scenes too.

 

You're 100% correct, time was massively tight but in hindsight, spending time optimizing would have saved more than that amount in render time.

 

I used Thorsten Hartmann's render optimizer but should have spent a lot more time on the shaders. Render times varied from 3-8mins depending on what was in the scene at 720x480 so I can imagine it would be way higher at 1080p. It was lit by a 10MB HDRI.

 

Do you have any tips for optimizing in Mental Ray as far as shaders? I think one I didn't do was reflect max distance and it's default is infinite I'm assuming.

 

Render settings were:

unified / raytrace

quality 1.5, min 1 max 300

filter gauss 2,2

contrast thresh 0.01, 0.01, 0.01

shadow segments

skylight IBL

FG off

 

Scene had 4,012,747 vertices (898 objects)

 

Any pointers you have would be fantastic, thank you!

Jason