Character Animation, again.

[JOSE DUENAS]

Hello...

After my first post of character animation in VRay, we started to follow all of the tips that Richard Rosenmann and other guys suggested... Thanks again for your help.....

I've been having several problems though... When I'm separately render the characters .... I calculate first the GI every frame for them... and then render the whole sequence through the network....

The first problem is that I'm getting black areas that flicker in the character... It seems that the GI is not well calculated.... I used the same method and parameters that I succesfully used for flythrough animations (with nothing moving but the camera) so... I don't know what's really happening.

The second and the most critical problem is Motion Blur... The scene is 185,000 faces.... and it renders perfectly in the network without MOtion Blur.... but Once I turn on this parameter.... we get an unknown error in any computer in the renderfarm... I try to avoid using VRay Motion Blur and using the Effect Motion Blur (wich we succesfully used in flytrhoughs) .... the scene starts rendering, but every 4th frame, it stops calculating... and freezes the process... we have to restart the Server Software ... but again.... we get the same problem over and over again.

We really don't know what to do... is there any special parameter that you have to consider calculating GI with characters and Calculating Motion Blur???

I'd appreciate your soon answer, since we're in a hurry with our deadline for this project.

Thanks in advanced for your help.

Jose Luis.

[richard_rosenman]

Hi Jose.

You must be more specific about what the black flickers look like. If you get small flickering in tight creases of the character, it is probably because your min,max values for the irradiance map are not high enough. I use min -2, max -1 and sometimes min -1, max 0 which often resolves any flickering in creases.

If you are getting blotchy flickering, you may not have enough hemispheric subdivisions for the irr map. The default is 50. I always use 30 and it does the job for me although interiors need more.

If you are gettings bright colored random blotches on random frames, turn image cropping on in your material.

Also, if you network render, you must network render every frame with it's own irradiance map calculation. You cannot create just one beforehand and then use it for your character animation.

Hope this helps but like I said, you have to be more specific with what the problem looks like.

-Richard

[JOSE DUENAS]

Hi Richard...

Thanks for answering... About the GI, thanks for the suggestion.... We also found no problem when calculating every frame with it's irradiance map without pre-calculating it in a single machine...
The problem was that I get some "dirt" in different parts of the character....

One question about this....
Do I have to do the complete render of the character (GI + render) in a single machine?? or can you send it through different machines in a network without flickering???

About Motion Blur.... How do you handle this?? Do you use Vray's Motion blur without problem?? or do you use a post-effect for it???

We always have problem when using Vray's... We just can't use it without getting problems in the renderfarm ... with any scene.... (This character for example is 180,000 faces)

Then, we decided to use the Max's Effect Motion Blur that we've used to architectural visualization... it's not the best, but at least you have something.... But we had a problem that we finally figured out...

In the character's eyes, we used Xform deformed Spheres... And for the eyelids, we used bigger versions of this spheres with hemisphere turned on and they were rotated within the Xform so they rotated following the deformed shape of the eye..... This modifier is animated for doing blinking.

Well... if the Xform modifier is enabled, we have problems with the motion blur in the network... it just stops calculating without any warning.....
If the animated Xform modifier is disabled, we network render without any problem......

Any experiences with this???

But more important.... could you give us a recommendations of how is your way to motion blur your scenes????

Thanks in advanced,
Regards,

Jose Luis.

[richard_rosenman]

Hi Jose.

You can send out a character sequence to the renderfarm each with single frame GI calculation.

As for the motion blur, I'm not sure I can help you out there because I've rarely ever had any problems with VRay's motion blur unless using really high polygon objects. I'm quite picky about using good motion blur so I only use 3D motion blur.

For the Barritas commercials we used hemispheres with scaling and FFD's for blinking. We didn't seem to have any problems with that and motion blur.

Character animation with GI is a lot of trial and error - you have to keep testing until you get the settings just right.

Well, sorry I couldn't be of more help.

-Richard

[tammo]

i gave up using GI on characters. too many problems/too much rendertime. i am sick of trial and error.
i am now using lightdomes again.
rendertimes under two minutes for three realistic human characters at once on the screen
the background layer is a precalculated irradiance map.
if your dome setup is good then it looks exactly like a pure GI rendering.

[tanveer]

tammo's trix is best i think.
but tammo when u use sky dome did u go for scanline or u keep yourself in vray renderer?

[tammo]

i use just a lot of spotlights with shadow maps and one brighter light with vray shadow to get some high detail shadows.