Agarak Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 Hello, guys! Need some advice from those of you experienced in large projects. Would you be so kind, pleease? :ngesmile: It seems I will be landing a large project for visualization. It will be about 25 acres (10 hectares), 15 buildings that will undergo reconstruction (the shortest is 50 yards/40 meters long, mainly two-three stories tall), 3 new ones, a tennis stadium, and entourage - trees, pavements, fences, etc. The client seems to go for animation too and some nice night artificial-lights scenes. As we are now only two of us with two PCs I know I will need to bring in some more hardware resources and manpower. We want to push the envelope on this project, so definitely want to use a renderer - I think V-Ray will be the one (speed, stability, quality). The time to complete the project will be about a month and a half. Can you advise how much hardware and power I would need for such a project? How many people? Is V-Ray good for these purposes? And any thoughts/comments are welcome. Thanks a lot in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 While I have never used Vray, I am a bit worried about the time frame you have given yourself. With a team of 4 or 5 you might be abel to complete a job that large if you really worked your ass off day and night until the end, but that's considering you have an established team that has worked together before and that you were expererienced with the renderer you are going to use. If you have to include R&D and establishing team dynamics in that timeframe as well, I think you might be setting yourself up for disaster. If you have a month of up time leading to this job I'd say your chances might be a bit better. my 2 cents. Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quizzy Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 Edward, Maybe you could post some reference material on how detailed you want it to be? mzzl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plastic Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 my advice is: stay with the tools you are familar with. there is no way that you learn a new rendering engine in a few days, or even weeks, especially if you haven't use global illumination before. bringing in new unknown technology in a time critical situation can only lead to disaster IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agarak Posted March 24, 2003 Author Share Posted March 24, 2003 Jeff - you read my thoughts ). Quizzy - what do you mean by ref materials? It will be as detailed as when we would have done a single building. Does it answer? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 what quizzy means is how detailed will the job be? kinda like what? i'd like to know that too. have you any past examples or pictures to show us what the detail of the modelling will look like, only we'll be in a better position to advise then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ingo Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 How many pictures do you have to render, one or two pro building ? I've just finished a job together with a colleague, we had to render 15 different buildings and had to deliver two renderings of each building, means in the end 30 renderings. Took us four weeks to get them finished. You can see some of them in this thread. ingo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 Be very clear as to your scope of work. Have the client sign off on paper sketches showing each viewing angle. So many people think that once you create the building all of the details just pop themselves on. Worst case is when someone says "yeah now I do wanna see the other side too, but that should only take you what another hour". It never hurts to be too clear and especially with the big ones. From what you explained I would be worried that you would spend 4 of your 6 weeks just getting your new hardware/software runnning. :gebigeek: But if you posted a site plan I think we could all get on the same page with you. But really good luck, sounds like fun. :angecool: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nisus Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 What is the final output of your film? And how close do you plan to get near every building? This will determine how much detail you'll need. If all 15 buildings are similar in setup modelling them wouldn't be so hard, especially not when you don't come up to close to them. Anyway, stick to plastics advice: use the tools you know. And ask yourself some questions? - What special tricks will you do to reduce rendertime? (calculate the maximum time a frame might render, how many days you need for the total film to render etc. THAN decide how much detail you want/need) - How can you reduce the amount of modelling? (half buildings, instances,...) Basicly, how can you achieve the same output with half the effort... rgds nisus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 calculate the maximum time a frame might render, how many days you need for the total film to render etc. THAN decide how much detail you want/need...nisus THAT is great advice. Work backwards from your completion date. Know what format and size you will render to, and how long it will take to put together the animation sequences (it sounds like from your post you are expecting to do animation) Are you handing in a cut film or raw frames? How long to do camera paths, test animation? How many frames will you need (framerate X seconds--don't forget to allow extra seconds if shots will disolve into eachother)? Now, as said, how long to render the frames? Subtract all that from your schedule and what's left is how long you have to model, texture and light (and animate objects, if applicable) your project. Throw in a few client changes, time for them to review your preliminaries... If you are just doing a series of still renderings, you would have a simpler schedule, but big renders take big time, too. Any more details of what you are trying to get done? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nisus Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 idd backwards calculating, exactly what I meant )) several ways to reduce rendering time: - lower render time per frame - lower total amount of frames - lower the resolution of the output - get more machines - get A LOT more machines - do all of the previous rgds nisus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted March 24, 2003 Share Posted March 24, 2003 several ways to reduce rendering time: - do all of the previous One more: efficient modeling. Fewer polygons render faster. If none of that does the trick you may be forced to pour coffee directly into the computer. Lots of coffee. Hey, it works on me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigcahunak Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 Originally posted by Agarak: The thing I am thinking of doing is to use the photomodeler (photos to 3D) for the buildings that already exist and will undergo reconstruction. Seems to be faster than 3Ding from the bottom up - anyone tried the technique before? I think this is what you wat to check out. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ingo Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 Originally posted by Agarak: The thing I am thinking of doing is to use the photomodeler (photos to 3D) for the buildings that already exist and will undergo reconstruction. Seems to be faster than 3Ding from the bottom up - anyone tried the technique before?Forget about it. Take care that you get decent plans and take a lot of photos from the site that you can use for texturing and as a modelling aid later. Your a lot faster that way and your buildings get the same look. As said before, use the tools you now use and try new tools only on test objects in your spare time. ingo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agarak Posted March 25, 2003 Author Share Posted March 25, 2003 Wow, guys, THAT was helpful. About the details - the funny thing is, that I only saw the site with my eyes and the client asked for a preliminary quote. There are no plans, no construction or working documents yet. It all will be handled to me at a later date and then we will dive deeper into the matter - how many stills, what detail, resolution, animations, etc. So for the moment I can't tell more than the situation is . I have about a month before the negotiations will take place, but considering the scale of the project, I want to be armed beforehand, "if you understand my meaning" . About some other matters. Of course we did GI in the past, but with Brazil - which is an excellent renderer, but the time, guys, the time... :ngesighw: That's why I am thinking of switching to V-Ray to speed up the production. The thing I am thinking of doing is to use the photomodeler (photos to 3D) for the buildings that already exist and will undergo reconstruction. Seems to be faster than 3Ding from the bottom up - anyone tried the technique before? Thanks a lot for replies! PS Ingo - impressive! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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