Rendering: Some assistance PLEASE :)

[OmeN]

http://sv1.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attach...&postid=604961

[Here is an overview just so you know what is actually happening]

That is the scene for my bathroom, however the glass material on the windows is merely just a test material chucked on for speed. The lighting needs a bit more playing with as well.
The scene takes place at night, [thus the need for proper glass isnt needed], the bathroom is modeled on my friends one. There will be the inclusion of some kind of blood made with Glu3d, its a kind of sinister, creepy short animation.

Here is my storyboard idea for the animation:
[feel free to give me any better ideas ! ]
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1: Blank screen, only a sound of dripping.

2: Est. Shot, Low angle view of the bathroom. [We can now hear an extractor fan in the background]

3: View from near "blood emitter" looking downwards, the blood drops past the camera [slightly to the left], there is a very shallow DOF so we cannot see where its going to.

4: Cut away [Towel rack] - Low Angle, maybe slight pan upwards?

5: Cut Away [Extractor Fan] - Straight on, maybe camera could twist one way, then the other?

6: Cut away [Soap] - Close up, DOF changes to reveal background objects

7: Drip shot [same as before]

8: Cut away [mirror] - Birds Eye Looking down [should just about be able to see something dripping in the reflection]

9: Drip shot

10: Cut away [Sink taps] - Close up, maybe pan from left to right a little bit.

11: Drip shot for double the length of the previous drip shot [building up tension].

12: As another drip falls the DOF changes to reveal where is going, we see a blood splattered bath. [Slow Mo]

13: [Still same angle] The lights begin to flicker on and off, the camera twists at an obscure angle. [to enhance a feeling of something is really wrong].

14: Cut to a low angle in the bath, the camera pans slowly upwards to show us the blood stained patch of the ceiling.

15: A drop falls again from the ceiling but this time onto the camera lens, turning the view into a dark red.
The sound of the extractor fan slows and stops.

16: The shot fades to black with only the sound of the dripping.

------------

The problem im facing is the rendering.

I haven't a clue whether to use passes, whereby if I do, what way should I do it ?
Because the ONLY animated moving object in my scene is the blood, the bathroom is reflective in area's and so is the blood...
How would you set up the rendering?

Or I could just render out everything in one pass ? [excluding the DOF]

I've read Richard's post's on using passes, and I've done them before but never using Max's pass thingys - I just normally set it up myself.
Im not toooo worried about render time since the animation wont be any longer than 2 mins. In saying that, the faster it renders the better for me so I can write my essay and finish off a film.

The lighting in the scene is done with ERCO's IES lights.

PLEASE can I get some friendly guidance on this since the project is a month or two late [due to a serious family crisis].

Thank you guys.

[OmeN]

That does make sense for you guys yeah ?

[OmeN]

Just bumping up, DaForce has helped out a TON but im still just asking here just incase anyone has a bright idea that would help me.

[OmeN]

Also I think I forgot to mention the lights will be flickering on and off towards the end of the animation only leaving the moonlight.

[J_Bug]

OK, I'm no expert on the subject here but just my opinion.

Use passes if you can figure them out or wait till 1.5. There is a little bit of logic to apply to specific scenes but not hard work (things like does this object pass within the larger objects shadow). Rendering in one pass isn't a bad solution though, of course, not as controllable in the end but not bad at all. I think your question hasn't been answered because you're basically asking everyone if we think you should add more work to this project but we aren't in your head. There are many factors that you should ask yourself to decide if you will end up using multiple passes in the end. If you've never used them before and this isn't a paying gig then I say go ahead and make it a learning experience. This may not be the best project to start with but if it's the only one you're working on then hey, why not? There is now so much info on passes and with the upcoming 1.5 you should be able to find the PERFECT solution for it with a little planning

No offence but just my 2c on this almost rediculously specific question. I think one thing that made me personally overlook it for a while was the fact that half of the post is a description of your storryboard. The notes you've provided are what you use to produce a helpful visual sequence, called a storyboard, and then file'em away somewhere. I can read a novel in ample time but whenever a friend asks me to read a script it takes twice as long just because of the formatting involved. Unless you do this form of editing every day it's always an extra hastle.

DRAW SOME STORYBOARDS BROTHER

Good luck,
--Jon

[natty]

DRAW SOME STORYBOARDS BROTHER

yeah then i think you will get a lot more help and response

[OmeN]

Ahhh come on its a forum - your meant to read !

Ok, well first of all the [written sb] is just to give you an idea that the camera isnt static and such and such is happening, im not bothered about adding in anything else to the project since its become a pain in the a$$.

I'd love to wait for 1.5 but since there is NEVER a specific deadline date for release, I'd rather not unless its like a week away.

I like using passes but i havent a clue if this will take forever to render, I think i'd like to render all the static objects and camera movements first, then render the "blood" and reflections after - BUT i dont know how to do that [with vray].

I did actually render out a storyboard but I dont have any web space to upload such files.

Anyway, I appreciate comments regardless if you think your going to offend me.

[OmeN]

Christ - also the "moonlight" has an animated shadow map of some branches swaying in the wind...

With all of this going on does it seem likely that i need to caclulate
ender every single fecking frame ?

Please some help with how to set this up because im loosing the plot here, I cant figure out what the hell to do.

[OmeN]

Project Abandoned

[J_Bug]

What compositing software are you using? Do you know it well enough to do some of these effects in post? You could consider the DOF, MB Animated objects for post. For simplicities sake, you can figure out some way to do the flickering light in post as well. All of the cans flicker or just one?. Keep in mind that for this to look the best it can you should probably think about lighting many of these shots individually. From the image you've shown it looks like there are only practical lights but for the many closeups you should use some extra fill and rim lights.

The fan would be simple to comp and you probably wouldn't have to use GI on the animated portion. Just use GI for the rest of that shot and some nicely place VRayLights for the fan blade layer. Or can you even see the blade (this is where storyboards would come in handy )

For the blood layer you'll want to use Single frame or even no GI which is what I'd suggest off the top of my head (considering the amount of reflections in it and on the tub surface). You might be able to find some way of doing the reflections of it on other surfaces in post also. I'm not exactly sure how it's done but I've seen this done well in the past. It must be some king of mirroring along with a normal channel Actually the entire closeup of blood doesn’t really need any GI if lit properly which shouldn't be to complicated on the white surfaces. You might want to consider custom environment maps for close ups at this point.

I'd suggest first organizing the shots into categories to save your sanity… for instance Stills, Camera Moves, DOF Layers and Animated Objects. Once this is done then start tagging these entries with technical specifics that will apply to each shot. When you get that together let me know and I'll see if I can help some more.

What's the animated shadow map for, clouds? This can probably be done another way similar to the flicker if that's the case. And is the flicker constantly occurring or is it just at key moments?

--Jon

[OmeN]

Jon:
Seriously appreciate your well thought out words of advice there !

To answer what you've said:
I'll be using After effects and digital fusion, but if Im lucky I can get to use Shake as well [but dont really need it that much].
Im doing the DOF with a zdepth pass and using the lenscare plug in to handle that in AE.

The flickering lights situation: Well I firstly want one light to flicker a bit, then for the others to go out as well, my thoughts on that is to render it without flickering then render a few shots with the "moonlight", then in premiere just chuck in the frames that i want to make it look flickering [easy enough].

The actual timeline is only around 500 frames [however animation is around 1500 frames] because Im just rendering from frame 0 for every shot [mainly because I could only be bothered to wait for glu3d to calculate 500 or so frames].

TBH I have most of it sussed out, and I dont think I can render the blood seperatly without it causing some serious headache to me, I can put a tempory link to the rubbish PRE VIZ of the animation so you know whats roughly happening if you like ? [link will only be active for 7 days]

I think using an incremental IR map is probably the only way I can do this in one pass [not forgetting a zdepth pass - but thats not vray so doesnt count hehe].
But the trouble im having is that the blood drips down from a height - so in most shots you wont see it - but you may see it in reflections. Which basically means I dont know which Nth frames to calculate the IR map on...
Should I play it safe for every shot and do it on the 10th frame ?

I honestly dont want to give up because I wanted this project and another one to be a little tribute to my brother who died about a month ago. So please forgive me if I come across moody or whatever the right word is, just finding it hard to get on with stuff.

[J_Bug]

I would go with the blood in reflections as a separate pass and no GI on it. There was recently a thread on reflections only but I didn't soak it all in so you'll have to do a search. I've been so busy I can't even remember how long ago it was. Once you get the details of the blood pass worked out you can figure out the Nth frame just as usual. With the limited amount of camera movement I would think every 10th is overkill.

--Jon

[OmeN]

http://s11.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1...DDB093672C72F2

That should be my aweful previz, its just to give you an idea of whats happening, the shots where there isnt any camera move is where the DOF changes occur [so bare with it].
Take a look and see what you think dude.

[J_Bug]

I think it's good, the shots are timed well and the drip looks nice too

--Jon

[OmeN]

lol, yeah my best photorealistic effect to date .

Well im rendering out the "background" now, and i'll composite the blood over the top of it later.