I’ll have to tell a bit more about the project, so please be patient ..
I started with the Project back in 2010 and originally it was just meant as a “test” for fragmenting and finally collapsing the whole building. The “simplicity” of the Architecture was the key reason why I chose this Cathedral but unfortunately lead to many frustration moments when I tried to make a contrasty and beautiful lighting - the cathedral is a nightmare if you want to render several shots with one lightsetup. Each and every piece of the base stone structure is modelled water tight and ready to be fragmented (which is why this was way more difficult to do than it would have been without the fragmenting idea in mind).
Anyways, after many render tests in Vray I had to admit that it was simply impossible to render animations in reasonable time and quality - not even speaking about moving objects and collapsing geometry.
The many rather little windows in this church and the “bounce-light-only”-archs on ground level made it very hard for biased methods do deliver a good quality result… and that’s where corona finally comes into place
I tried a lot of different renderers with the scene but none of them were able to render it in a satisfying time.
Some time last year I discovered Corona and made a few very encouraging tests which then were the reason why I made the Corona Converter Script .
And besides that… Corona is the only other renderer (compared to Vray, MR, fR) which is able to use the native max maps and is not using some shitty exporter or a custom material editor.
Some data:
each Frame rendered ~3 hours on dual Xeon e5 2620 @2.0 Ghz + 30mins for the fog stuff, all in 1080p
Just to clarify: do not render the fogtrick with the beauty render, it will take a lot of time that way. Do it in a seperate scene if you must have it
my own opinion what I could have done better:
floor material, but unfortunately Corona is not yet supporting everything I need.
the Stone shaders (somehow they don’t really look well..)
a fresh view on the scene I really got blind to any problems since I’m working on it for years now
the models are outdated, I would do some things a lot different today.
compositing: oh my… don’t get me started
AA flickering on the reflecting parts (more a technical problem though)
Me too But I don’t have much time to do a longer animation right now and the render times of 3h a frame are not so much helpful either Those 3 shots are intended for our new reel, that’s why it’s so short atm.
Hehe I understand! Anyways really nice animation Just wondering, is there anything specific one should think about when making an animation with Corona? (sorry if this have been said before)
It’s amazing :- ).
I once modelled a cathedral as well, for college class, but my teacher did not appreciated the 3D much and failed me :- D (it was 2 days before I decided to quit school, and this was one of the reasons). I loved the experience though.
If you don’t mind, can you post some wires of the models :- ) ? Not for anything particular to see, I just enjoy the modelling aspect of these structures, for me it’s almost art by itself.
For animations I try to get the best balance of AA, pt and light samples. That means balancing the pt and lt multipliers is an essential part of my settings. The default is fine most of the time but if things get ugly (like the cathedral with those little windows) you need to be aware that direct lighting can be a way bigger problem than GI. In my Scene I have the multipliers at 40 for pt and 18 for light (this is NOT a new default for everyone to use blindly!).
The important thing to remember here is that the noise always has it’s origin somewhere, be it direct lighting or GI or AA and that can be easily seen in the respective Render elements (directlighting and DiffuseGI).
Concerning AA: if lt and pt look fine you can try to optimize AA - that means less pt and lt per pass. Instead of 40 / 18 I try 20 / 9, which means double AA in the same time.
Another important thing: Don’t mess with MSI. 20 is really a good default and you should only set it higher if there’s a clear reason for it. I actually try setting it lower if I can - but 20 is pretty good already.
Haha! yes, not everyone likes modelled cathedrals (I tend to be part of this group of people now )
Here you go, some wireframes (not that spectacular I fear)
wow now I know what you mean by “watertight”, it’s much less pieces than I thought. When I modelled it, I used lot of sweeps over splines, but this is ton harder, much respect.
No voice… wao this is a master and amazing work ! And what result !
Thanks to share it and explain the way you’ve produced that.
Congratulations
Roland
It’s postwork. It’s made with several layered glows
But if you were using Vray before you can use Vrays post effects with corona (..if you really want to)
I stopped working with Thinking particles years ago so I don’t really believe it will happen but.. who knows
It’s rendered independently (and I recommend to do that!). If you render it with the beauty it will take a lot more time and make everything way more complicated. It’s rendered in a separate file with black geometry, disabled GI and optimized settings.
The direct light includes the whole skylight from outside, not just the sun, so it’s very important for the scene (see the attached image).
I’d really appreciate to see more game/animation stuff done with Corona Unfortunately 95% of the gallery stuff is Archviz only
..
I really got blind to any problems since I’m working on it for years now
)
