Fly-Through Mode

[ockelford]

Dear Andrei,

Is there any way I can do a fly through - i.e. Frame buffer stays loaded between frames and only the camera is moved?

I'm in abit of a situation where most of the time rendering and animation is loading the scene into Vray, it would be amazing to get it working (a late night yesterday)...

Sorry about the entry in bug reports, but I wonder if its broken? I'm sure this was working a while ago.

Rob

[dddjef_vanilla]

I was about to report this one. Fly trough (camera path) mode is not working as previous version, but I'm not sure what's going on here.
I'll test it to report this in detail.

[bdancer]

So, how do you guess that it's broken? We have an animation mode called "All but meshes" this will export the animation of camera, mats and object transforms. You could use Fly-Through in this mode. Is that not working?

[dddjef_vanilla]

Humm, I think the issue come from "full range mode". A very basic scene doesn't render animation in full range mode, but only the last image. It does work with vray blender 2.68.1.

Vray 2.40 here.


fullrange_bug.zip

[bdancer]

Could you first update to the latest exporter and then check again? I have no issues with "Camera path" or "Fly-Through" mode...

[ockelford]

My apologies again - All but meshes works properly, however I confirm the bug dddjef_vanilla reports - Only the last frame in Full range renders - in any file.

My issue is also about how to calculate the Lightcache for an animation. For Irradiance map , I use 'incremental add' method, rendering GI for every 10th frame. Will the light cache be calculated for the whole route when 'Camera Path' is selected and a single frame of GI is rendered, or do I need to use 'Flythrough Mode', rendering every 10th frame as well? I'm getting strange results from using camera path and rendering a single frame, but I'm not sure I'm supposed to render GI only for the whole route.

BTW I'm using Vray 3.0 and the latest build, plus an exporter updated this morning.

Many thanks, I really apprecaite this, I have an animation to render for Monday, and it just needs this issue resolving before I can start.

Humm, I think the issue come from "full range mode". A very basic scene doesn't render animation in full range mode, but only the last image. It does work with vray blender 2.68.1.

Vray 2.40 here.


[ATTACH]17978[/ATTACH]

[bdancer]

I've just rendered this scene without any problems. Please, update your exporterd, check the console if everything is updated fine. If its not - please update manually (with "git pull" or manual exporter unpacking - https://github.com/bdancer/vb25/wiki...lation#archive).

[dddjef_vanilla]

Ok, it works now. (I have to update manually, the automatic way says 'updated' but didn't change anything)
Is there a way to know the exporter version?

[bdancer]

Only using git by now.
This will show the commit log, so the most top message is the last change:

git log

commit 89667c7f6cb2318e1666397312ef3f283cd84979
Author: Andrei Izrantcev <andrei.izrantcev@chaosgroup.com>
Date:   Fri Jan 10 13:37:17 2014 +0200

    fix: test_break for full-range mode

commit 27fdb2b5ec9908e23e70fc0313128e04a6f69b57
Author: Andrei Izrantcev <andrei.izrantcev@chaosgroup.com>
Date:   Fri Jan 10 13:03:11 2014 +0200

    fix: test break for frame by frame mode

commit d0abf08e09b3c2aa1ecc963fae7a16b7f721e467
Author: Andrei Izrantcev <andrei.izrantcev@chaosgroup.com>
Date:   Thu Jan 9 12:49:50 2014 +0200

    fix: filter out speaker object

Btw, "Update Exporter" should work now - there were some errors, but now they are fixed. The only thing is that you should start Blender "As Admimistrator" because exporter is located under "Program Files" and windows doesn't allow to override files with user previliges.

[ockelford]

I confirm Light Cache works properly, seems my settings were wrong, but I understand it better now. Apologies for any confusion caused by my lack of knowledge...

Have a great weekend.

Rob.

[bdancer]

ockelford, I guess it was a bug in the exporter, hope it's fixed and won't appear again =)

[andybot_cg]

Hi ockelford, I'd like to ask - does incremental add for the irrmap work for you? The last time I tried it I was not able to get a single irmap file out of it. When I did the animation prepass, I got these black splotches all over. I guess I'll have to try it myself, I've just had no end of trouble with getting a decent irrmap for animations, and I thought I'd ask you how it goes for you and what are successful settings.
Thanks!

Andy

[ockelford]

Hi Andybot,

I may be telling you stuff you already know, but the workflow I use, once I've set up the animation route and done an OpenGL preview of the animation, is as follows:

1. Do some test renders as static images to check for the lighting levels etc.
2. Set up the renderer to prepare the GI files, by selecting Render>Animation and Render>GI only. Set Dimensions>Step to '10' under dimensions (renders every 10th frame)
3. Set GI to irradiance map and Light Cache.
4. Set Light Cache HIGH - (4000 - 6000 subdivs has been used before, try starting with 2000), and also enough samples (this reduces horrible blotches). Also Check 'Flythrough' as mode and check the Camera Path (not sure if camera path is needed in flythrough, but do it anyway). Also, set AutoSave map and give a unique name.
5. In Irradiance Map, set incremental add as mode (I think this is right, its been a while, today I've been doing sample render animations, using only lightcache - an interesting exercise). I usually use high animation preset. Check autosave map and give is a unique name.
6. Press Render, and Vray will first calculate the Light Cache, then iterated through every 10th frame, calculating the IR Map and adding it to the saved map as it goes.
7. After a long cup of coffee, when GI is calculated, change the Dimensions>Step to 1, to render every frame. Then change IM and LC settings both to 'From File' and make sure the file its loading is the same as the one you just created (I've forgotten this so many times!). The uncheck Render>GI Only.
8. Press Render Animation.
9. 2hours later, realise you've made a mistake in the model, or settings, hit your head on the wall, fix it and go to 1.

I really hope this helps. If you have problems with the irradiance map, try increasing the settings or look up more samples under reconstruction paramters, but niot too many - this can soften the image too much. Also, a Light cache with too few subdivs can cause awful lighting effects, like blotches, so be sure to check you've got enough. Sometimes you might think you need to recalculate the GI - which takes ages. First try changing how Vray uses these maps - these are the settings which are visible when 'From File' is selected for IM and LC, and run some tests.

This is how I think it is, please check this out first, I maybe wrong on some items, I'd be glad to learn!!!!

Regards,

Rob.

[andybot_cg]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the response. I've never had any trouble with pre-calculating the LC for flythrough, that's always worked fine for me. (and for some animations, that's all I've used for GI, it's indeed very quick!) It's the irradiance map that's constantly giving me fits. I've never gotten a proper GI solution out of "incremental add to current map" I've had to use the "animation prepass" setting, but the problem is that is generates an individual map for each frame selected. I've been able to use it with a lower stepping (so it's not every frame) but I sometimes get bad artifacts (black splotches) on some frames. I'm trying to put together a sample scene, but now vray keeps crashing trying to load my saved irmap, so I'm starting over. Anyway, just been pretty frustrated with the irradiance map, and I'm still not quite sure where I'm going wrong. What are your "Interp samples" and "Calc. pass interpolation samples" settings in your irrmap rollout? Do you have "use camera path" checked?
Thanks!

Andy

[ockelford]

Hi Andy,

I've not used it for a while, I'll dig in to it in a few days, when I have some time... The key to this is how the different modes work, some delete the maps at the beginning of rendering, others add to the file, others to the one in memory, I have been through this before though and I think you have to make sure that the method you use saves the map it creates to file as in goes along, otherwise your prepass may not be stored during the GI only phase.

So sorry I can't work this out for you I'm really very busy, I'll try and run some tests soon...

Rob.