rendering videos questions

[BVA]

I am rendering my first video in vray for modo, please can someone with experience let me know if I approach this correct?

1. Saving out the IC
I tick the "dont render final frames" under Vray Main, then go to GI tab and use either fly through (if camera is animated) or if other objects are animated I use the "single Frame" and tick "Use camera Path". I give it a place to save the Light Cache.

Now, how do I start the calculation? I use render or "render animation with vray"? I tried render animation with vray and it forced me to give a filename saving all the frames, is this needed?
Do I need to calculate IC for ALL frames or only every 5th or 10th (If only the camera is animated) ( I seem to remember from back in my max days IC is calculated for the whole scene, not camera dependent, right?

2. Saving out Irradiance Map
This video I used Brute force, but if someone don't mind telling me for future reference. Irradiance map I can save every 5th or 10th if camera only is animated. again, how do I run the calculation for this?

3.Render the animation
Once the IC is saved, I remove the tick "dont render final frames" and change the IC to from file, pointing to the saved file.
How do I send full frames to my slaves? Currently I can use DR but it is a waste, a lot of time the slaves sit and wait for other buckets to complete. I need to send full frames to the slaves.

[vladimir.nedev]

1. Saving out the IC
I tick the "dont render final frames" under Vray Main, then go to GI tab and use either fly through (if camera is animated) or if other objects are animated I use the "single Frame" and tick "Use camera Path". I give it a place to save the Light Cache.

Now, how do I start the calculation? I use render or "render animation with vray"? I tried render animation with vray and it forced me to give a filename saving all the frames, is this needed?
Do I need to calculate IC for ALL frames or only every 5th or 10th (If only the camera is animated) ( I seem to remember from back in my max days IC is calculated for the whole scene, not camera dependent, right?

By IC, I guess you mean Light Cache, right ?

The Use Camera Path for both the Irradiance Map and the Light Cache, and the Fly-through mode for Light Cache don't work correctly in V-Ray for MODO at the moment.
This is because I am not giving the V-Ray Core the camera positions for all frames of the animation, only for the first frame.
This means that the Light Cache quality will be very bad towards the end of the animation, resulting in incorrect GI.

It might still be worth using Fly-through mode depending on how much your camera moves, as it will help reduce flickering in an animation.
But it will be the same as just computing the Light Cache for the first frame and then using the calculated LC for all frames.
Whereas the fly-through mode samples the full camera path on the first frame.

You don't need to render every 5th or 10th frame, everything will be done on the first frame, when Fly-through mode is used.
You also don't need to compute the Light Cache as a separate step.
The tutorial you were reading : https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...ough+Animation
computes the light cache separately, mainly because it does a few iterations over the parameters to improve the quality.

2. Saving out Irradiance Map
This video I used Brute force, but if someone don't mind telling me for future reference. Irradiance map I can save every 5th or 10th if camera only is animated. again, how do I run the calculation for this?

You render an animation with Irradiance Map mode set to Multiframe incremental and Frame Step set to 5 or 10 or something else.

3.Render the animation
Once the IC is saved, I remove the tick "dont render final frames" and change the IC to from file, pointing to the saved file.
How do I send full frames to my slaves? Currently I can use DR but it is a waste, a lot of time the slaves sit and wait for other buckets to complete. I need to send full frames to the slaves.

You can try making your buckets smaller, this might help a bit with utilization.
You can also use some sort of render manager to distribute whole frames.
I don't think we will have the time to add this natively in the near future.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev