Animation with Irradiance Mapping

[ojaigryphon]

I am rendering an animation and am running through the pre-calculated irradiance map using the Incremental Add to Current Map setting. I am calculating every 5th frame of a 1200 frame animation. The first frame took a couple minutes, but every subsequent frame has gotten progressively longer, until now it is taking over 2 hours per frame. I was under the impression that the time should be getting shorter as it wouldn't have to re-look at previously calculated samples, but the opposite seems to be the case.
Also, though it is now taking over 2 hours to complete each frame, the time stamp on the image shows only just over 1 hour. It takes about an hour after the progress window shows Clearing mapping. Is this normal?
Thanks for any help.

[fooprobe]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

yes, it should get shorter in general. but if you move to an area with a much more complex lighting situation that wasn't visible in the first frame, it might get longer because it has so much more to fill in. can you post an image of what you're up to? even a shaded-view screenshot of the model and your settings would be helpful.

also, i find doing every 5th frame a little excessive, i usually start out at every 15 and see how it looks. you can always go back and add more to the IR map file later. depending on what your animation is like, maybe this could be contributing to the problem, since the IR map will be occupying more and more and more RAM - over 1200 frames you'd be calculating the IR 240 times. when you save the IR map file, how big is it on disk? if you're moving around the model a lot during the animation, it might be worth breaking up the IR map into a few different smaller files.

[ojaigryphon]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

Thanks for the response. The camera did start from far away and get closer, so I assumed it would get a little longer each frame up until the camera got close and then begun spinning around the model. But it is still getting longer each frame even though the view is not getting more complex - I am now over 3 hours per frame. Here are some images from the model to get an idea:

Shaded View:


Simple Render:


Irradiance Map Settings:


Movie of light calculation output:
http://s1214.photobucket.com/albums/...tingFrames.mp4

The IR map file is 43MB. So far the lighting calculation hasn't crashed and it has been running for five days straight - so that is a good thing.

[fooprobe]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

if you clear the IR map and try to do one of the really slow frames, does it still take 2+ hours? just wondering if it's the incremental add that's causing it.

43MB isn't extremely large for an IR map. you do have it set to autosave, so it's saving a 43MB file at every frame, but it's not a gigantic file and you would propbably notice if there was that kind of lag after the calc anyway. and it's not like you're switching from an exterior to an interior view. dumb question, is your physical camera on? sometimes if it's off and the v-ray sun is on the IR calc takes a long time. try turning off the plants and stair rails too, they don't seem excessive, but it may help just to see if you can find the culprit.

[ojaigryphon]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

Unfortunately, I am about a third of the way through the IR calc and I don't really want to stop it and screw something up. You can see from the simple render I posted that it only took about 16 min for a single frame to be rendered so it seems that it has something to do with the incremental add. What I find interesting is that the IR map file is updated after about an hour, than the image file of the IR calc that is created is made almost two hours later. The process window sits on "Clearing color mapper" for almost two hours! What is it doing during this time?

[fooprobe]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

no clue. anyone?

[ojaigryphon]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

Is it possible that it has something to do with Bongo? When I do a IR calc for a single frame, it only took a couple minutes. When I use Bongo and render the same frame, it stalls on "Clearing color mapper" for a few minutes. Could Bongo somehow be causing Vray to stall and causing each subsequent frame to take longer than the previous? I may just have to go through each frame of the 159 frames remaining manually and not use Bongo

[fooprobe]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

i really think that IR every 5 frames is more than you are going to need.

[ojaigryphon]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

You're probably right, but when I started the light calc, it was only going to take a couple minutes per frame so 240 frames didn't seem like too much time.

Interestingly enough, I quit and restarted the IR calc from the last frame I had completed. It went from three hours to three minutes per frame! Somehow, the buildup of the IR map, either through Vray or Bongo, slows everything down.

EDIT: A few frames later and it is now at about 10 minutes per frame!

[ojaigryphon]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

I assume by the lack of further response that no one has any idea about this issue, or assumes it is a Bongo problem. I asked on the Bongo forum and haven't received an answer there, yet. Does anyone know if it is normal for the longest part of the rendering procedure to occur after the Progress Window shows "Clearing color mapper"? Each frame gets rendered and saved in a reasonable amount of time, but then it takes quite a while afterward to get to the next frame. Thanks for any help.

[fooprobe]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

i *have* seen v-ray spend some time cleaning up after itself, but never 2 hours. sounds like a memory issue. are you running 32 bit or 64? how much RAM? see this thread for more on that:
http://forum.asgvis.com/index.php?topic=5887.0

[ojaigryphon]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

It's 64 bit Vista with 6GB RAM, but I am running Rhino 4 which is 32 bit, right? But I haven't seen the memory use go above 2GB, yet.

[fooprobe]

Re: Animation with Irradiance Mapping

rhino is 32 bit, but it can use more ram on a 64-bit system than on a 32-bit. clearly that's not your issue though.