Afterburn and VRay

[richard_rosenman]

Hey guys - I am under a tight deadline and I cannot get Afterburn to render properly with VRay on the renderfarm - we get black random frames. We are using a Particle Flow Afterburn operator. I've tried almost everything. Seems to render fine with scanline.

Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated as I really need to get this working asap!

Thanks!
-Richard

[richard_rosenman]

BTW, I have found it is the Afterburn raytraced shadow that VRay seems to not like. However, we need to use this. Unless there is another type of shadow available that is compatible with both Afterburn and VRay?

-Richard

[Da_elf]

i take it that this is something that cant be done as a render layer and composited later?? it would be nice if we had aura as a shader like AB so that you dont need to use aura to calculate dynamics but can just apply it directly to a particle cloud

[dimo]

Hi Richard,

I know this doesn't help much, but I had the same problem once (And probably will have it next week again). I rendered the afterburn clouds as a separate layer. The thing was that the motion blur (for the matte objects) didn't match exactly to the vray layers so it was a whole nightmare for the compositor. If you find a solution, please let us know.

Best Regards,

Dieter

[richard_rosenman]

Hi Dieter;

Exactly the problem I was having - didn't want to do it with two passes because of motion blur. But, after some troubleshooting, I figure it out.

Basically, you have to use Afterburn shadows if you want a good Afterburn effect. If you want a really good Afterburn effect, you will want to use Afterburn raytraced shadows. VRay doesn't like Afterburn raytraced shadows and therefore renders some frames black.

Now here's the solution: Switching to a VRay shadow will not work with Afterburn BUT switching to a VRay shadow and selecting Atmosphere Shadows On under Shadow Parameters will shade the Afterburn volumetric exactly like an Afterburn Raytraced Shadow AND will render frames properly.

Hopefully this will be helpful to someone as it took me ages to figure this one out.

-Richard

[jacksc02]

ahhhhh the old atmosphere shadows on trick!

[dimo]

Ah,
thanks for sharing. Haven't thought of this one.

Dieter

[Seraph135]

I've been doing some recent tests with Vray and Afterburn. This thread helped me to find the answer to one of my problems (thanks Richard). So the next question is has anyone found a way to get shadows from objects in the scene to cast onto AB while using Vray shadows?

Thanks,

Tim J

[studioDIM]

Now here's the solution: Switching to a VRay shadow will not work with Afterburn BUT switching to a VRay shadow and selecting Atmosphere Shadows On under Shadow Parameters will shade the Afterburn volumetric exactly like an Afterburn Raytraced Shadow AND will render frames properly.

Was about to say, use vray shadows with atmosphere shadows on
Only thing is that they work also when arealights, so watch out for rendertimes if that's the case (volume area shadows, ugh!).

Lele