SOS!!!! Fly through animation in Maya

[sajeelshukla]

Hi Guys,
I know this has been covered a few times around but it seems there is too much data scattered to make sense.

My scene file tech specks:

Exterior city
thousands of lo-poly homes (instances of vray proxy base variation around 40 homes)
few thousand trees ever-motion model (around 5 variations again instanced vray proxy's)
Huge palace Hi poly-count
Huge statue 2mill poly -count approx
Lots of shaders and textures of course.
Nothing but the camera moves in the scene.

Render farm tech specs
5 blades + 2 workstations all same speck minus the graphic card in blades
dual xeon 2.10 ghz processors 6 cores each
32 gb ram

Render settings:
Sampler Adaptive, Min shading rate 1, Divide shading subdivs checked, AA filter Area
Min subdivs 1 max 12, threshold 0.010
DMC sampler advanced not touched

GI:
Irradiance map + Light cache
Default settintings i.e
IR preset high mode single frame
LC subdivs 1000 sample size 0.010
mode single frame


Render time with above settings was ranging between 12-18 mins based on where my camera is in the scene including file load time from the server (distributed rendering on with all 7 workstations calculating GI and rendering the image)

This is pretty decent time considering the bare amount of polygons in the scene....
I have gone through following tutorials..

https://vimeo.com/57434313 (not tired yet)
http://www.workshop.mintviz.com/tuto...on-using-vray/ (gi was very slow to calculate approx 20 mins per frame with 7 render nodes cant rely on this as calculating 100 frames approx would take a few days and dont know how quickly the image would render post that having said that still its exceeding my 15 mins average per frame limit)
http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/V...ing+Objects+II (this tute is almost same as the one above from mint viz i guess its the same tut as lots of text is exactly the same)
http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/V...ough+Animation (cant use this one as LC it is mentioned is for interior scenes only)



My current on going test settings for motion

Sampler is set to same settings

Gi settings
IR
Preset high, subdivs 50(default) Interp samples 20 (default) use camera path check box ticked, Mode Multi-frame incremental
Light cache
Subdivs 1000, sample size 0.010, screen sapce (wold scale check box off [ in the rendering walk through animation in the docs it said to keep it in screen space for exterior and large scale scenens]), use camera path check box turned on,
, Use light cache for glossy rays turned off ( I think this needs to be on if i have blurry reflections with interpolation on in the shaders not too sure but all three tutorials hinted that if i precalc GI with that turned off then in rendering final image i can turn off secondary gi bounces as it would be store with IR map.... I do have lots of glossy reflections in almost all the shaders values going around .4 to .9) mode flythrough,

I am calculating every 10th frame for my 750 frames animation. Started this morning around 6 am i guess and time is coming around 4:09 pm with time slider at 521 frame (Distributed rendering is on and in global options dont render final image is checked on)





Also I only have one shot to render this to deliver in time as averaging 15 mins total per frame i have approx 8 days to render every thing out....

Any suggestions to make it faster, better work flow or if you see any mistakes please warn me....

P.s Using maya 2014 with latest vray build for Maya (official build not the nightly one)

[Komposer]

since the "use camera path" option is avalible, You only need to check this option.
In both, prim and secondary engine.
Mode to "Single frame" and with "auto save file" path and name...
Automaticaly no final render starts!
You can use DR!
For final render, use the two cached files with "From File" mode and deactivate "use camera path".
Thats all - must work fine and fast!
Hope the best for Your job...

[sajeelshukla]

since the "use camera path" option is avalible, You only need to check this option.
In both, prim and secondary engine.
Mode to "Single frame" and with "auto save file" path and name...
Automaticaly no final render starts!
You can use DR!
For final render, use the two cached files with "From File" mode and deactivate "use camera path".
Thats all - must work fine and fast!
Hope the best for Your job...

Do i render a single frame for pre-calc or go with a sequence every 10 frames or something?

came across this blog which says just do single frame and it should work...


http://3dslondon.blogspot.in/2012/07...low-for-v.html

[Komposer]

Yes, You use the "single frame" otpion.
It seems to render a single frame...
...but the render looks forward through the whole cam path and adds only the parts vray needs.
At the End, and while calculation runs, You can see, that the irrmaps looks smearly...and thats perfect correct!
U can take a look into the final maps, using the "imapviewer.exe", inside the chaos programm/bin folder, and u will see, that the irrmap is perfect for the whole cam path.
I donn´t know, if every 10 frame works, never tried it before. I use normaly every frame

[sharktacos]

This might be useful to add to your reading: http://sharktacos.com/Forums/misc.ph...on=help&hid=24