Another Sun Animation

[jonasa]

Hi Folks...

Here's a small clip from our latest property marketing DVD... our first stab at the new features in Vray 1.5 (mainly VraySun, VraySky and Vray2SidedMtl)

Ravelston XXIII - Quicktime 6Mb

NB... I guess we should have tried to track the lensflare in the background - but ran out of time...

[jacksc02]

nice one jonas, tracking the flare might finish it off

[Infrared digital]

Hi Jonasa

I really like this and also the way you have merged the exterior backgrounds with the interior - how have you done this so well ?

Is the opening shot a time lapse movie of a sky with the Vray sun tracked with it ? The flare looks fine to me, where they created in post or Max?

good work

N

[gadzooks]

Please explain how you did this. Especially the first half. Brilliant work!!!!

[Da_elf]

we need a vray lens flare now. hehe. does max lens flare line up properly when using vray camera with alot of curve in the lens?

[joconnell]

I normally use knoll light factory spectacular for this - If you render a pass with a dot for your light position, it uses the alpha for the location of the flare and the rgb channels for the colour - works really well but you need to turn off anti aliasing or else the flare will pulsate in brightness slightly - It's got a really nice option to be occluded by objects alphas too so you can get it to dissappear behind beams, trees, objects and so on. It's still missing a lot of options to allow those really nice chris cunningham style flares though...

[vance3d]

Jonas,

I really like your interior shots. I'd like to know what method of calculating the GI you used to take into account your moving sun. did you use LWF for these animations?

nice work!

V Miller

[jonasa]

Cheers everybody...

The timelapse sequence:

1. One tired photographer on the roof of the building (which is under construction) for approx 5h - filmed in HD half speed (a LOT of footage)

2. Vray Sun and Sky matched to exact day and time, Vray Sun linked to an animated sun-system with the sun turned off.

3. Using VrayPhysCam and LWF (i think) - Linear color correction and Gamma 2.2

4. All rendered in one go with the HD footage on an extruded arc using IRR and LC @ 'medium animation' preset and calc'd for every frame (frame times averaged 20 mins on our dual dual-core opterons)

I wanted to render out the background seperately for better control in post, but couldn't get reflections if I unticked 'visible to camera' on the background object. Also still not figured a good way of getting an alpha channel for the glass...

Cheers

[panthon]

It looks nice!

How did u manage to get those clean results with IM and LC in medium? I get lots of flickering and noise even with high settings!

Can u talk us about AA settings?

Do u know what model your HD camera is? And the resolution at which it was filmed?

Thanks!

Joconnel = using the alpha as source for the flare sounds great. Im tired of tracking! Chris Cunningham...he´s a true master!

[jonasa]

How did u manage to get those clean results with IM and LC in medium? I get lots of flickering and noise even with high settings!

...well I wish I knew - normally I would get flickering and noise, its either because i'm not moving the camera, because 1.5 is better, because there's only one light source or because LWF just works

Can u talk us about AA settings?

Quadratic

Do u know what model your HD camera is? And the resolution at which it was filmed?

Its a Panasonic HVX-200, and I think it was filmed in 720p

[ene.xis]

excelent!

good to see that wraped up
and i m glad u got to animate those curtains!

[sv]

thats really impressive - great work.
where is it? in the UK>?

I really like your camera movements as well - very subtle, and quite cinematic - they aren't obviously trying to show every last corner of the rooms, but you still get a really good idea of space and the interior.

Really good job.

[jonasa]

Thanks...

Project is in Edinburgh, Scotland... and I'm dying to show you all the rest - but not allowed at the moment

But it is a 4 min DVD production starting in the morning and ending at night-time with fireworks and everything, a 50-50 mix of live action footage and animation...

Will post the rest when and if we're allowed to

[vance3d]

I have to say I can't believe you don't have flickering problems either. If I tried those settings with my current project, I'm sure it would flicker all over the place. Maybe it is the single light source but I don't know why that would matter since you are generating new samples on every frame. I would imagine that those samples would be placed differently at some point.

V Miller

[panthon]

Oh man, i love the panasonic HVX-200. We are about to purchase one in the near future! Not sure about the lack of 720 25p support in avid or finalcut pro, that's holding me back, but once it´s sorted out, that camera will be ours!