Old Vicarage - Video and Stills

[Morne]

Morne: I decided to go the traditional way here and take the material subdivs back down to between 8 and 16 and the raise the AA and BF subdivs. It seemed to work quite well. The important bit here was to increase enormously (above 100) the subdiv of the Vray Light with the Peter Guthrie HDR in it so that it did not generate too much noise in the shadows. In the video, I stored the VrayLight with the irradiance map (video is IM/LC), so the noise problem just did not arise, although the shadows are of course much less defined.

How high did you have to go with the AA and the BF subdivs? Also, did you use the default noise threshold of 0.01?

[alvius]

do you use sub-pixel mapping and clamp output?

[Neilg]

It's beautiful.

The camera shake is too clearly random and looks p bad though - do it with keyframes & think about the steps someone would be taking, & how their body would move with each one. You could even track some handheld footage, then look at the curves in max to see how they move around each other.
The attention to detail in everything else is so high, then it seems like you took your frames and slapped a preset camera shake on it.

[trixian]

As for "procedural" camera shake.....its clearly a lot faster to set up than hand keying it, but one can quite quickly mimic this by using multiplier curves on top of the noise controllers. Then you only have to hand key the steps on the multiplier curve so the shake is timed properly. Combine this with a layer of direct movement (up\down and acceleration\deceleration) and it can get quite nice without too much fuss.

[waaazoo]

lovely views as always Bertrand. I agree for the camera shake movement, it's not so natural.
I find that the video could have a little more crisp and saturated images. Nice work on the details as everybody already said

[nils_p]

Like always, awesome! I too agree with the camera movement.

You can do this as an alternative:
If you're on subscription you can use matchmover to track real world camera movement. Even with your phone if neccesary.

[tartan]

I think the stills look great but the animation does not hold up to the same level. Are you using the same post process for stills as you use for your animations?. For example if you pause the video on the scene of the cabinet with candles etc it looks completely different from your stills. I think a workflow where stills and animations match is advantageous.

[Morne]

I'm Sorry to repeat myself and I understand people are very busy and can't always reply to posts.

BUT
These images are just amazing and the workflow behind it is intriguing.

SO:

@joconnell
Could you share your script please for calculating glossy subdivs please? Or at least could you share the subdiv values for the glossy in 0.5 increments from say glossy 1.0 down to 0.6? I'm geussing with this workflow you hardly ever go lower than 0.6?

@BBB3
How high did you have to go with the AA and the BF subdivs? Also, did you use the default noise threshold of 0.01?

[BBB3]

Thanks for the feedback and sorry for beinh elusive.

Yes, the video is suboptimal. It was done a bit as an afterthought and with etremely lowered quality settings in ordered to get render times down from 4-5 hours to 4-5 minutes per frame. So clearly a lot gets lost in the process. The camera shake was aslo a thirty second job with a wiggle expression in After Effects (the good news being that it wasn't baked into the footage and can easily be altered, should one be bothered to redo the vid.)

Morne: the AA was between 16 and 32 and I used 0,003 as noise threshold, pretty much as always.

actually I am on subscription and own Matchmover. I should really have a look at it...

i used subpixel mapping on the video, not on the stills as I needed 32 bit post processing.

[pengo]

Bernard U inspire with your impressive works a huge amount of peoples.
I do my congratulations for the great quality of the overall elements of the scene and of the work. But a question. Why u specified the last phrase about subpixel mapping? Using it from what I know (and this question demostrates I put my knowledge in doubt ), doesn't influence the data's images meaning with this the light infos in them.
it is more the case of clamp parameter, that make the image no more tweakable in 32 bit (creating of course it with linear method) . Am I wrong?

[pixela]

Awesome!work. When I look at your works, I discover more treasures every time I look at them again. You have great eye and I admire your dedication in your scenes.
Thanks for sending us some more nice images to look at and showing us new horizons in CG