Radiosity Animation (settings question)

[STRAT]

stochastic mode is always the best solution, but who has time for that? ;)

if you have animated elements in your scene then you cant use any of the standard camera animation methods as the gi wont comply properly (unless you use 100% accuracy with high samples.

you can use the object animation mode, but again, high settings must ideally be used and this is a fairly lengthy render process and it's most 'messy' (full of splotches) in it's results if samps aint high enough.

or you can use the standard camera animation modes but use a render tag to make the animated items completely ignored by the gi.

if any of these methods appeal to you im sure we can then advise on some settings :)

[leed]

if you are rendering this animation across a network I would not use Gi.
There is no way of getting rid of the flicker.

If anybody can, then please let me know as I have been trying for months...

If you are rendering on one computer use object, set to always recompute.
As far as the rest of the settings they are personal to each scene. There are some good tutorials out there 3d fluff has a good dvd
also

http://mvpny.com/Cinema4D.html
has a good gi tutorial.

you fined people have different approaches, and getting advice to mach up is difficult. You can get god results in a number of ways, but I find the MV tutorials very informative. and keep testing your own ideas.

It is always good to learn how to fake it.... just in case...
Lee

[smurfman]

STRAT and Leed... thanks for your comments.

I have done a number of still radiosity shots have have a fairly good handle on settings, but didn't know what GI setting would be good for animation.

This is going to be over a network of more than 100 Xserves, so I have a decent amount of computing power. :)

Leed, is your network a combination of different processors (IBM/Motorola, Intel, AMD)? If so, would that have something to do with the flicker? If I used stochastic on this, and since it's on a one processor platform, would I get decent results regarding the flicker?

Thanks again for your help.

[leed]

The flickering is caused by each computer, no matter what type or make of computer, generating a different random stochastic sample set, the way to avoid it is to have really high settings, 99% - 100% so there is no chance for the random samples to be different. If you can do this then go for it. It will be a high per frame time, but it is worth a test first before committing.

Because you have moving things. The blinds, that will change the scene I would use Object, set to always.

Lee

[STRAT]

if your settings are decent enough then yes, use stochastic mode. test a short sequence.

but Leed is right. network rendering using the camera animations mode will not work, no matter what combination of platforms you use.

[smurfman]

Thanks again! I'll run a test stochastic animation at 100% accuracy and see how it goes.

[STRAT]

Thanks again! I'll run a test stochastic animation at 100% accuracy and see how it goes.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, thats even worse. that'll yield render times that make Maxwell look fast!


try stocastic mode, keep the diff depth to 1, and try the accuracy at maybe 60 or 70 percent. sto samps as high as you dare.

[Ernest Burden]

try stocastic mode, keep the diff depth to 1, and try the accuracy at maybe 60 or 70 percent. sto samps as high as you dare.

Start with accuracy at 10% or less with good stoc. sample numbers. Low accuracy doesn't seem to hit visible quality like it does with regular GI modes.

You might also think about baking the lighting. It takes a while to do, but your render times will be really fast.

[smurfman]

Start with accuracy at 10% or less with good stoc. sample numbers. Low accuracy doesn't seem to hit visible quality like it does with regular GI modes.

You might also think about baking the lighting. It takes a while to do, but your render times will be really fast.

STRAT & Ernest... thanks for the info on the accuracy levels with stochastic rendering. What is the process of baking the lighting? Will this be okay to do since I am animating shades coming down over windows in a couple rooms? Does baking the lighting work with network rendering?

Thanks!

[Kokosing]

If you'd like to see something using baked GI, there's an animation I did here:

www.forwardbuilding.net/penthouse

follow the link to 3d tour.

I can talk you through the process if you want.

As for your closing blinds, it would add a tricky step, but it can probably be done.

In agreement with Earnest, the render times are very fast.

W

[smurfman]

If you'd like to see something using baked GI, there's an animation I did here:

www.forwardbuilding.net/penthouse

follow the link to 3d tour.

I can talk you through the process if you want.

As for your closing blinds, it would add a tricky step, but it can probably be done.

In agreement with Earnest, the render times are very fast.

W

Nice. Do you have to bake every light or is it a simpler process than that? We have quite a few lights and instances of those lights. Probably 150-250 lights including instances. I can turn off the window shades animating for the Radiosity version of this animation so I won't have to worry about a work-around.

I would appreciate it if you can give a few steps or basic method to how you do this.

Thanks!

[Kokosing]

You don't bake your lights, you bake the materials for each object.

This basically takes all colours which appear on objects as a result of the various lighting, shadow, reflection and ambient occlusions effects you've applied and creates a new bitmap image that replaces the original material and all the effects.

The simplest way to do this is select an object and choose Render - Bake Object. This brings up a dialog where you can choose which channels to bake. For GI, you'll want illumination. You also need to set the resolution for the baked texture.

When you bake this, you'll get a new object in the manager and the old version will be invisible. The new object will have new UVs and the new material will be applied. You'll see the new material in the material manager, with the baked image applied to the luminance channel. If you copy this into an empty scene and switch off the autolight, you'll see that the object looks just as if it had been lit by GI, but it will render in under 5 seconds.

A few things to think about:

You really need to be sure you're not going to change much when you set out to bake things.

You can simplify the baking process by connecting objects. This is particularly simple if they have the same materials applied. It's a pain if you're using selection sets as connecting usually overrides this.

If you've got an object that covers alot of screen space, like walls, you may want to break them into smaller objects. This is because you're converting your proceedural textures to bitmaps when you bake. And you'll need all the resolution you can get out of each bake.

Beware of any flipped normals when you bake. The baker only looks at one side of a polygon.

I found that accuracy settings were the most critical for baking. 95% worked best for me. If you're using area shadows, crank those up as well.

The Sniper Pro plugin is great for checking GI quickly. But in my case, it was usually about 1 stop darker than my real renders.

You can get more control over your bakes by using the bake texture tag in the render menu.

The 3d Fluff dvd covers this process quite well.

Finally, you really need to think about your workflow and signoff proceedure when you bake. If your client makes changes after you bake, you can make a lot of trips to the oven.



Will

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