Workflow Advice??

[kriscabrera15]

Hey guys currently i am working in an (in-house) animation department for othropedic tools, been here for about 1 year. Trying to grasp a good workflow for the animations we are doing. they were using lightwave before me, i got them to move over to max and Vray. But having been here for a year i cant figure out a good workflow for our animations. So basically we render at 1920 and we are very close to our anatomy and toolds am talking like 2 or 4 inches away, meaning we need Hirez textures upwards of 8k. Another thing we have to render is alot of glossy refracted parts, and reflections. The big issue is we have upwards of 4000 frames in one animation! That the real killer. So i tried to get around to rendering at 1280 since most of these animation are view on monitors. That didnt fly, i also tryed to cut down frames, that didnt fly, i also trying to get further away from our anatomy that didnt fly, i tried getting more space and more render blades since we only have 14, that didnt fly. So am all out of ideas and wanted your guys advice on what you guys think i could do to be a little more efficient. Our frames average anywhere from 3 minutes to 1:30 hours. depending how close we are to refracted parts. I am all out of ideas =/ any advice would help. Thanks in advanced!!

[Morbid Angel]

Have you considered rendering on the cloud or remote farms?

[kriscabrera15]

yea actually i did inform them on that to but that didn't fly either. I hit alot of walls requesting a better workflow, am not used to this type of environment, so many of the workflows ideas i have come from a film and commercial environment, and its difficult to make them understand (since no one here comes from a background like that) , so am pretty much on a stand still on getting a more efficient workflow =/

[Morbid Angel]

well 1.5 hour per frame for HD frame is a damn good time. I get 4-5 hours for a full 2k frame and that's normal If you can't convince the management to invest more $ there isnt much you can do I afraid on the software side of things...

[YoyoBoy]

You can get SolidRocks to speed things up a bit. Quite a bit, actually.

[Alan Iglesias]

Hmmmm......if you will, what exactly didn't "fly" regarding the 1k rendering idea?

Almost every video/film frame I've ever seen that was rendered to 1280x720 (1k) upsampled very nicely to 1920x1080 (2k) when it came to auditioning it on the display source (especially a relatively small one but 60 inch monitors still looked great). As 3d rendering is often inherently more detailed pixel for pixel than most types of photography, the upsampling is very often not only not noticed, but often is actually is a break for the eyes. The only exception in my experience might be rendering to large format (60mm) film to be projected on a 60+ foot screen, but even then we rendered to 2k and upsamnpled to 4k.

-Alan

[kriscabrera15]

Morbid: yea I tell that that's the norm, but they have a hard time believing me so, I guess I will be the blame for not getting it done in their time frame lol

Yoyoboy:I will have a look at solid rocks thanks

Alan: what didn't fly was the idea of them getting something half quality. They have it in there head that 1920 is something from god.They think it's going to look bad, even after me showing them the difference, which like u said its almost nothing. I gave them a side by side, and the weird thing is the people who actually see the final results are surgeons! So they will never notice the difference at all.

I guess I'll just have to roll with this stint for a bit, then get back to the real world.

[Alan Iglesias]

It looks like you have a real case of working for some folks who are just not very smart about our industry standards. The problem is of course that they think they are. Honestly, if you are not looking at this stuff on huge monitors, I can see absolutely no reason to render to 2k.

I'd like to know what they are basing their expectations on, regarding both image quality and rendering time. Do any of them have any real-world experience to make these determinations, or are they just guessing based on something their nephew who "does computers" told them?

The terms "Full HD" and "1080p" get bandied about an awful lot in the media, and it is certainly understandable how someone might get a bit confused, especially when it comes to applying these generalities to something as specific as what we do.

The difference is that 1920x1080 is actually a display standard, not neccesarily a rendering standard.

Do they actually eyeball your settings? I hate to ever advise something deceptive, but you might consider rendering to 1k and running a little Pshop batch file routine to upsample the shots in the background. If you can get someone to write up a little Windows routine for you it would be automatic and you wouldn't be lying when you told them that "software" was taking care of your problems!

Failing that, as a professional in this industry since 1985, I would be happy to speak to your superiors and give them a little history and technical information which might go a long way towards getting your efficiency where you all need it to be. It wouldn't be the first time I did this...

PM me if this sounds good to you...

-Alan

[vlado]

If you like, you can also send us a scene that renders slow to vray@chaosgroup.com - our support guys might be able to give you tips on optimizing it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[REEL_PICTURES_LTD]

Sounds like you need to educate your superiors. This is a situation we have all faced, or will face.
A client/boss who has an uncompromising set of values. Without really understanding the priorities.
We would all love to have the facilities that Pixar have.
We would all love to have the Orthopaedic facilities that 'Hospital for Special Surgery, New York' have
But if your in a regional area your not going to wait for a render farm or wait for the latest surgery tools before you get the job done the best way you can.