Help - advice for smooth animations

[j.galang]

hi all, i just wanted to aska few questions regarding some settings to get better results in animation usuing vray and MAX. the main goal is to get less flickering not only of the thin lines but even less noise. also sometimes even the textures seem to flicker a bit. mainly my animations are used for archviz.

your suggestions will be much appreciated. below are a few questions.

1. what AA method and filter is a good "general" AA/filter combo? i have read someone using Adaptive QMC even without a filter. some say Area is ok with adaptive subdivision and so on...

2. the noise issue on plain walls in interior animations is probably an issue with the subdivs of the light, any other suggestions to help lessen that? also i do not know how to solve the slight flickering in textured areas (even for exteriors having only sun and sky). any tips on this?

3. i have read a bit even on post production applying some motion blur either through combustion or reelsmart blur in AE of DF. is this a good practice? is this the most common way to "smooth" out the animation?

as a background, i do know how to setup an animation using vray and a saved Imap. this is not the case of a wrong method used, or bad compression (even uncompressed videos, the frames have an ever so slight variation in some pixels to cause a slight noise).

what i am saying is how can i take my animations to the next level. when i see commercial animations i don't see any flickering/noise at all (its sooo smooth). my gut is that a lot is done in post. i tend to just output to frames like tiff or tga and compose in premiere, use sorrenson 3 or wmv9 and viola.

again, your tips and suggestions are appreciated. (also any books you can recommend on this subject).


jg

[joconnell]

1. I like adaptive qmc for animation - it isn't quite as high quality as adaptive subdivision in terms of finding tiny details but for animation those tiny details tend to cause broadcast problems like crawling between pixels and flickering. Also if you render animation you tend to use motion blur anyway which will soften the detail and remove any benefit of the adaptive. Also adaptive qmc works a lot quicker with any of the "blurry" effects like depth of field, motion blur or glossy materials. Personally I like the look of mitchell - area is a little too soft for me and looks like old max renders, catmull rom is too sharp (you can mimic the look with a sharpen filter in post anyway).

2. Yep - its the light subdivs. If you're doing a fly through where the camera is moving through a static scene then you can use the store with irmap option to bake the area shadows and get no noise - the quality of the shadows is still controlled by the subdivs though. Noise is generally caused by raytracing so if you're using qmc as your global illumination method or using area lights you'll get noise. Switch to irradiance map and you'll get less of this.

3. It's not a bad idea for three reasons - one is that as you say it'll smudge over the render slightly and thus blur the graininess you're getting. Second of all pretty much everything in the real world motion blurs when filmed so you need it to look realistic. Third of all, if you do the motion blur in post, you can tweak the amount of blur very quickly to get it right - if you do it in 3d, you have to calculate the entire render and the motion blur at the same time so it takes a lot longer. If you decide later on that the motion blur is too much or too little then you're back to a full 3d re-render, with post blur it's a 2d tweak and a much quicker render.

In terms of commercial animations it's just horsepower behind the companies in a lot of cases - we don't have any technology you don't, it's just a load of companies will have enough computers to use realyl high quality but still deliver in time.

[j.galang]

thank you very much for the reply. it was very helpful and gave me more insight into how to improve our animations.


jg