house project - anim

this is a house project that we are currently doing the design for. here is a piece of some animations that we are starting to put together for it.

http://www.proces2.com/vray/chuck\_anim01.wmv

one question is regarding the trees that show up in the background. i always have an issue with the flickering of these trees. they are 3d trees (bionatics) and in this case that just have a single vray material on them. any suggestions as to how i can get rid of the flickering?

other c and c’s welcome, too.

thanks,
sean

It looks to me like a video compression issue, but i could be wrong

Looks like to me that the AA is a bit to low .. had the same problem with a bump map on a wall .. the whole wall was doing the same thing.

Nice Animation by the way

thanks for the quick responses.

i checked the uncompressed AVI (created out of Premiere) and that still had the flickering. Could it be from the images rendered out of MAX? The files are TGA’s 32 bit - Compressed - Pre-Multiplied Alpha.

I have the AA set to - Fixed 3, using Mitchell Netravalli filter.

sean

compressed targa is a lossless format as far as i know…so you shouldn’t be getting any flickering from the TGA.

do you have a procedural map in there? have you tried adaptive AA yet?

nope, no procedural map on the tree objects. can something like a noise map cause that to happen?

i haven’t tried ‘adaptive’ for the animation - any suggestions for settings.

could it just be the amount of detail in the geometry? since it is so far in the distance - vray has trouble rendering the detail accurately from frame to frame? just a guess.

sean

procedurals could cause that if they were being regenerated each frame or on each rendernode

as for the AA, the point of it is to take care of the fact that it gets so detailed in the distance…i usually use -1/3

thanks. i’ll give those AA settings a try tonight and see what i get.

sean

i re-rendered the anim (using Adaptive AA set to -1,3) and it seems to have fixed the flickering with the trees. i also rendered it to a higher resolution which i think helped as well.

http://www.proces2.com/vray/chuck\_anim02.wmv

there are a couple other things though. now i see some banding along the edge of the roof where it meets the sky. also, i am not sure why the playback is so choppy now. i created an uncompressed AVI out of Premiere then used the Windows Media Encoder to create the WMV file.

suggestions for fixing these 2 issues?

thanks,
sean

glad to see the flickering is gone

as for the banding…does it appear in the raw uncompressed version? if so, you need to play with the AA settings a bit…if not, then its due to the codec/format you used for compression

as for the chopiness…its either a compression/playback issue, or something with your framerate

I found that AA using simple two-level 1/4 with unchecking “filter maps” also gives nice results…adding a slight blur and grain in Premiere also helps to get rid of flickering abd banding…

I also have the issue of a chopiness when a video is played for the first time then it playes smooth…

I also tried different compressions/formats out of premiere and the ones I had better luck with were MPEG 1 w/ high bitrate as well as Miicrosoft DV AVI with DV(NTSC) comression…it plays back quite smooth but the file size can be somewhat big…

paul.

cocolas…if it plays choppy the first time and then smooth then your bitrate is set too high

cool…thanks for the tip Dynedain!!!..really apreciate that…since I wasn’t sure what it was :smile: :smile:

paul.

great - thanks for the feedback. i’ll keep tinkering with the AA and compression and see what i get.

sean

less us know cause I’m at the same point as well with an animation I’m doing…I’ll post as well.

paul.

i am not having any luck so far with changing the bit rate. when i lower the rate, it still plays choppy. i’ve played with settings and formats in both Cleaner XL and Windows Media Encoder and had no luck fixing it. i am going to render out some more frames this weekend and keep playing with it.

sean

here’s the latest update for the animation:

http://www.proces2.com/vray/chuck\_anim03.wmv

i think i got rid of the choppiness in the playback. I used the windows media encoder with variable bit rate set between 3000 and 3500.

sean

not bad at all…although it makes my neck sore :wink:

that’s funny, never thought of it like that.

your backside might get a little scratched up too - some of these shots are rolling along, pretty low to the ground.

sean