Animation Help

[bKittsARC]

I'm having some issues with a walkthrough that I'm currently working on. My typical animation settings that I've used in the past aren't cutting it this time. The foliage is flickering like hell on me.... I've attached the current setup I'm using and a link to a clip from the scene. Anyone have an idea of what I could do to get this cleaned up a better?

thanks in advance.

animation clip > www.envisage26.com/videos/SC_clip-02.mov (29MB)

[tricky]

Mmm.

You have a linear workflow button - I don't have one of those

[Sascha Selent]

I see two kinds of flickering: some highlight-flickering in the leafs of the trees at the wall in the foreground and some shadow-flickering in the trees in the background.

For the foreground-flickering I would say make the sun invisible. If in SP3 it´s possible to avoid the sun affect speculars then try this also. Maybe increase the Max-samples in the antialiasing to somewhat like 16 or 32.

For the shadow-flickering in the background: Are the trees affected by some lights with shadow maps? If yes then maybe the shadow maps are too small. If shadow maps are too small they sometimes seem to disappear for some frames.

Hope that helps.

Sascha

[bKittsARC]

For the foreground-flickering I would say make the sun invisible. If in SP3 it´s possible to avoid the sun affect speculars then try this also. Maybe increase the Max-samples in the antialiasing to somewhat like 16 or 32.

The sun is already invisible, I'll try upping the AA, I was trying to keep the samples down to keep the frame times under 30 mins.

For the shadow-flickering in the background: Are the trees affected by some lights with shadow maps? If yes then maybe the shadow maps are too small. If shadow maps are too small they sometimes seem to disappear for some frames.

Only lights in the scene is the vray sun and a handful of vray planes. perhaps something in the sun settings could be adjusted?

[Sascha Selent]

Okay, then my tips don´t match

I'll try upping the AA, I was trying to keep the samples down to keep the frame times under 30 mins.

Give it a try! I don´t know why, but in some situations I even have shorter rendertimes with higher settings for the max-samples! I´m sure Vlado has an explanation for that.

[mike_kennedy]

try turning off Randomise samples.....

[pg1]

I think sasha is right there are 2 types of flickering
For the shadow flickering try ticking dont affect adaptation only.
This will increase you render time but not by so much as you will be telling vray that the image is darker than it really is so it will spend more time anti aliasing in the shadow area.

As for the flickering I would adjust the materials that are causing the problems.
Make them less reflective
I would also try 1, 8 in your anti aliasing or possibly up to 1, 16

[bKittsARC]

so with a bit of testing, I realized the problem....

I never finished upgrading the renderfarm with the same release that's on my machine, which is why testing local was fine, then when I'd process the entire sequence, it came back from the rendernodes inconsistant between what rendered on workstations versus rendernodes

I think I'll go beat my head against a wall now.

:-\

[Sascha Selent]

so with a bit of testing, I realized the problem....

I never finished upgrading the renderfarm with the same release that's on my machine, which is why testing local was fine, then when I'd process the entire sequence, it came back from the rendernodes inconsistant between what rendered on workstations versus rendernodes

I think I'll go beat my head against a wall now.

:-\

Ah, okay. Because of this I do mirror my Max-program-folder to all the slaves after installing something on the master...

[m_hinks]

Mmm.

You have a linear workflow button - I don't have one of those

Ha ha, you read my mind. Sometimes I feel I'm the only one without SP3!!

[Sascha Selent]

Ha ha, you read my mind. Sometimes I feel I'm the only one without SP3!!

NO, me too!

I like to wait until Chaos decides to release a proven and stable SP3 - unless I do not have to do animation with moving objects...

...by the way - when is the time come for SP3?