I always like reading it when others do it so I figure it was only right to open up a bit
Jose - it was a few different methods, We did a base GI pass with all static lights using a saved irradiance map and light cache, then did a separate render which was just the moving sun (although itâs hard to tell, it never stops moving from sunrise-sunset) using BF/LC.
We used this method because using BF/LC for everything and doing it in a single pass the ETA per frame was 6+ hours.
This cut the base IR down to about 30 mins and the sun pass with BF down to 15 or so. Some went higher, some stayed low - by completion they averaged an hour. We knew which ones were fast and which would take longer so we did the quick ones first to find out how much time we could push ones like the central kitchen shot up (went up to 1h 40 all in, the longest)
Resolution was 1920x810
Alex - dont always, but on this one we decided very early on that we would test this. We didnât have any other jobs on so we could spend the extra manpower, and in doing so decided to try and get the render times as low as possible with as little waste as possible.
It was an interesting test of our limits, but it was a lot of manpower. Cheaper than buying another 5-10 machines though, by a long way. Wouldâve been nice to have for sure, but we didnât need them - Iâd prefer to get better ones when we do need them.
Even with 3x the render farm though we still couldnt have delivered on time by rendering everything in a single pass. To use brute force and deliver on the same schedule weâd have needed an extra 25 machines. Thatâs a phenomenal expense. The 2 weeks while it was rendering we worked optimising and breaking the other scenes into passes, we didnât need to have those 2 weeks free to work on something else. Itâs not a lot of gain.
Pretty interesting how you did it. I was curious to see how BF/LC would work at that level of production vrs deadline situation.
How would you handle moving trees , or other moving geometry with a similar method? would you still go with IM + LC and different BF layers with moving geometry?
We shot that ourselves as a bracketed timelapse from the building next door. It was kind of funny - the first time we went, we had access to one building & went up on the roof for sunrise. your usual roof, walls around it but a tripod was high enough to see over. Safe.
We went back to get the sunset and found out that they didnât want to let us back up - so our client called the building next door and got us up on that roof for the next morning. We get up there and the entire thing is enclosed with a tall structure - presumably to guard the air con system from wind - except for one gap which could only be reached by laying on my stomach and pulling myself under some steel frame to get onto this 2ft deep ledge, and set up 2 tripods and cameras. We were doing this before sunrise too, in the absolute pitch black.
This is standing on the ledge, looking straight down:
Couldnt open the tripods properly but they were stable.
Neil, I tried Resolve but I have problems when using .exr files. Did you guys used linear workflow, because when I import .exr file into Resolve itâs dark.
Weâve not used it for any big job, but when we tested it we didnt open exrâs straight in it - we were opening the 16bit output from fusion into it.
Always have to apply gamma 2.2 to exrâs in fusion though.
Itâs worth noting what opens fine in photoshop doesnt open right in fusion - and if you make it open right in fusion it doesnt open right in PS. if it doesnt look right one way or the other, do a .454 or 2.2 so that it does.
