Rendering Models or Logo Anims in simple Studios. Share your settings!

[tammo]

I guess many of us have rendered some models or Logos in a studio environment,
often for use with an alpha channel.
For example a rotating Camera thats moving or opening a few Parts,
so you cant just do a flythrough to get the Lighting Solution.

So what is the best way to light and setup these animations?

I tried using a domelight with an HDR image, but often you have to testrender a lot of them
until you find something useful.
And you can't change it so easy if there are "clever" ideas from the client.

Most of the time I just place a lot of V-Ray rectangle lights around the object,
leave GI off, and play around with settings, positions,
and sometimes even the new softbox textures if the object is very reflective.

If the object has a lot of glossy parts,
it looks like the rendering is faster with GI and "use LC for Glossy" turned on.
I would use Ir-Map on single Frame Mode, medium anim preset, Min/Max both -1,
Hemispheric samples 90, and 50 interpolation.

Light Cache is usually on default with 1400 Samples, single Frame, use glossy=On.

Without GI I would use 8 or 16samples for the lights, DMC min 1 and Max 8,
Quadratic AA, Adaptive 0,95, and 0,008 Threshold.

Usually i am using a Vray Phys Cam with motion blur on and 1/50 shutter on 25 FPS.

So what's your workflow for these simple Animations?

[tammo]

Sorry,i think the beginning is hard to understand,
i was talking about "turntable" style animations.

For example a camcorder 3d model that is slowly rotating and flipping out a viewfinder.
In my bad english it sounds like i was talking about a virtual camera that's rotating and moving

[squintnic]

I would just set up a simple studio setup...I have just made one as a matter as fact for a video im making
you can see progress shots here:

http://nichamilton.tumblr.com/

its very very simple (crude) a white curved floor / wall model...some well placed vray plane lights with softbox text in the texture slot if you have any reflective materials like chrome.

As far as settings I would use brute force if it was heavily animated...1/15 or so DMC and lower the clr threshold to get a acceptable render time / noise
physical camera on 1/50th or so - maybe lower if you want want to exaggerate that mo -blur, a full set of render passes including a zdepth and normals pass

...so basically what you have said! just try it out!

i also use a dome light with a studio HRDI set to reflect / spec only sometimes if I dont model in the background of the set..

[tammo]

Yes! Your Images are exactly what I was talking about. Very nice style and clean rendering.

Since there is not much light bouncing around because of all the large softboxes
and the missing environment I thought about leaving GI off,
but i was surprised that the render times are sometimes even longer.

Is this normal or is there a mistake in my workflow?

[squintnic]

Interesting! I had the same thing happen to me. I was going to leave GI off to save some time but it ended up being slower with GI off...I think it was 4.24 for a no GI 720p frame vs 3.48 for GI on...

[simmsimaging]

This is something we do a lot for Bell for cell phones. I have posted only a couple but you can see the idea here

We have done them a couple of ways. Vraylights with VraySoftbox Texture for most of it, and a VrayLight as a dome with a gradient map for the environment. The object locked and the camera is circling the object. We have a setup that we try to use as our base now (for consistency as well as efficiency) but if I were to start it now I would do with HDR Light Studio and generate all light with one HDR map. With the new link to VrayRT the setup is super,fast and render times would be even quicker.

One note; the key highlight on the front screen that you see at the start of the animation is a signature thing Bell uses for all their products, and that is something we add in After Effects as it's much easier to control.
/b

[tammo]

The lighting of the phones must have been very difficult,
with reflective flat surfaces i always have problems with highlights jumping or moving very fast during camera moves,
But this looks super smooth. Maybe it's because of your softbox textures, or the lights are very large in scale to the objects.
Did you render them without GI, or was it also faster with GI turned on?

I can't think of a reason why all those light bounce calculations would speed rendering up,
but it seems to happen on many types of scenes not just the turntables.

[simmsimaging]

lighting the phones wasn't that bad really. The textures help for sure, but they always do. I hate flat white reflections I can't speak to why GI might be faster - I'm not that technically savvy and I never render without it. For me it's less important than ensuring the result is as photo-realistic as possible and that the scene behaves as real-world (ish) as I can get it because it makes the whole process more intuitive for me.

[Zdravko]

I was going to leave GI off to save some time but it ended up being slower with GI off

Would it be possible to send us an example scene to support@chaosgroup.com?