animation rendering setup

[kalamazandy]

I tried this the other day:
http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help...ials_anim2.htm

It helped my flickering, But it didn't fix it on eyelashes which don't move. Also I got the lightcache settings wrong, so wasted a LOT of time. Using that method it's a little hard to test out and see if you're flickering without spending a bunch of time testing.

Is there a quicker method for rendering an animation where you have moving objects, and Maybe a moving camera (I generally attempt to leave the camera's still, and just switch camera shots often, in order to allow me to fix mistakes and mix elements faster on short jobs)? By quicker I mean, setup time.
I have plenty of render farm time to myself, but only so much time to set things up. Having to render out each camera's GI calcs on one machine, then change the render settings to use the appropriate file, and make sure to not forget to set the render dependency to the farm? Well, that leaves a lot of room for me to make a mistake for one. But it also takes quite a bit of time.

Right now I'm hitting about 12 minutes per frame. I could probably optimize that a bit, but it's not worth my time on projects like these. The animations are less than 2000 frames. That'll render over the weekend on 5 machines. I would be ok with something more like 20 minutes per frame if I could just set it up, and send it. Then move on.


Am I living a pipe dream? My scene is typically a pretty plain white room with focus on some products of sort in the middle doing some basic animation. The timeline is typically 1-3 weeks total.

Also, anyone know of a tool that sets all your vray camera's exposures at once? I thought I had them all, and missed one. :/

[Morbid Angel]

What you are asking is a very common question which gets asked a lot. For moving objects in general, you should use brute force, or refrain from using gi at all. Gi with interpolation on moving geometry is not a very viable method: you will spend more time setting up, then turning on brute force and letting the computer do the job. The only real time when you need gi, is when your moving objects are inside a closed space such as room, where the only source of light is for example a window.

[svetlozar.draganov]

Also, anyone know of a tool that sets all your vray camera's exposures at once? I thought I had them all, and missed one. :/

Unfortunately there isn't any tool about that but you could use either MAXScript Listener or Wire Parameters in order to set parameters at once or link them.
You can turn ON/OFF exposure parameter by selecting all VrayCameras and type the following command in MAXScript Listener:

$.exposure = on

$.exposure = off

Respectively you could set F-number / Shutter Speed / ISO via following commands

$.f_number = 8

$.shutter_speed = 200

$.ISO = 100

It helped my flickering, But it didn't fix it on eyelashes which don't move.:/

Have you tried to activate Retrace threshold in LC parameters ?

I have plenty of render farm time to myself, but only so much time to set things up. Having to render out each camera's GI calcs on one machine, then change the render settings to use the appropriate file, and make sure to not forget to set the render dependency to the farm? Well, that leaves a lot of room for me to make a mistake for one. But it also takes quite a bit of time.

Right now I'm hitting about 12 minutes per frame. I could probably optimize that a bit, but it's not worth my time on projects like these. The animations are less than 2000 frames. That'll render over the weekend on 5 machines. I would be ok with something more like 20 minutes per frame if I could just set it up, and send it. Then move on.
/

Unfortunately rendering Animation with moving objects using IM and LC involves a lot of pre-steps and indeed there are a lot of room for mistake. If you have enough render-power and not much time for messing with render-settings it would be better to switch to Brute Force approach like Morbid Angel said.

[kalamazandy]

My objects are all moving inside of a room with specific ceiling lights, so I'm stuck with GI. The client want to know what it will look like under fairly realistic lighting. I'm still whitebalancing it though. It would be crazy blue if I didn't.

I tried flipping to straight brute force. Ouch, the render times really can skyrocket. I jumped from 10-20min per frame to 3-4 hours with reasonable noise. I couldn't probably handle 1-2 hours, but I guess I don't quite have that much available.

I'll give the scripts a try. It seems fairly straight forward.

It has been a few years since I used vray and I wasn't aware of the retrace option in lightcache. Most materials here are slightly to very glossy, so that might help the flickering.
edit: For some reason Catmull-Rom created some crazy looking artifacts on the edges of things that lit them up with saturated cyan, yellow, or magenta looking colors. That took a while to figure out the cause. It was the filter. I wish I knew the underlying cause of That though. I'm sure something else is broken in the scene.

Hopefully I'll get the hang of the settings again soon. It's hard to just jump right back into things after so much time.

[svetlozar.draganov]

Yes, BF+BF usually requires a lot more time than IM+LC, in order to generate noiseless animation.
If you are not able to optimize render-times to acceptable level it would be better to switch to either IM+LC or to BF+LC - they both are suitable for interior-animation with moving objects.

Retrace option is LC will improve GI solution in areas with very small details, it will also resolves light-leaks and glossiness issues. Please follow the link bellow to see some examples:
http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help...he.htm#retrace

According to the filter types - it is not very recommended to use sharpening filters like Catmull-Rom for animations cause they exaggerate flickering and noise defects even more - it would be better to use blurring filters like Area filter and then if you consider you could apply sharp-filter on post.

[cheerioboy]

I believe one solution to setting one camera setting and having it apply to all cameras is to the Exposure Control from within the Environment & Effects. In there, there's an option to choose VRay Exposure Control and set the mode to 'from VRay camera' - the camera you choose would be the single camera you use for setting up the correct camera settings.

I believe this should override any other camera settings, be it a vray camera or a regular max camera. I haven't experimented with it enough, at the moment I'm using it to set vray cam settings on regular max cameras.

[svetlozar.draganov]

VrayExposureControl is not taken into account if you are rendering through VrayPhysicalCamera - it only works with Max Native Cams.

[cheerioboy]

VrayExposureControl is not taken into account if you are rendering through VrayPhysicalCamera - it only works with Max Native Cams.

I wonder if that should/could be changed then to override all cameras?

[mcnamex]

Retrace option is LC will improve GI solution in areas with very small details, it will also resolves light-leaks and glossiness issues. Please follow the link bellow to see some examples:
http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help...he.htm#retrace

I find that using this will increase render time quite significant. Am I missing more information on how to optimise/ using this features properly?
If anyone can get more clarification on this one.

[tashko.zashev]

I find that using this will increase render time quite significant. Am I missing more information on how to optimise/ using this features properly?
If anyone can get more clarification on this one.

Please check the threads below:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...441#post523441
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...+cache+retrace

There is a very useful example created by Vlado.

[tashko.zashev]

I wonder if that should/could be changed then to override all cameras?

VrayExposureControl is not designed to be used that way, but will check if we can do something about this.

[voltron7]

I wonder if that should/could be changed then to override all cameras?

VrayExposureControl is not designed to be used that way, but will check if we can do something about this.

at some stages of projects, having this as a toggle/option would be great. +1

[tashko.zashev]

I checked our list of new feature requests and found one with V-Ray Camera Lister. I'm believe that it will bring a massive improvement over the scene camera management and give more control,options, e.t.c.