Animation with Vue....Trees flicker

[Chadman]

Welcome to animations in Vue, this is only my 2 cents & it comes with higher render times but it can resolve your problem it just depends on what your deadline is. Here is how l would address your issue, Choose User Settings via the render options menu & go straight into object Anti-aliasing settings & do a 1sec animation test like this to start out with:

Systematic
Anti Aliasing Stratergy: Soft
Subrays per pixel: MIN3 MAX6 - This is trail & error

Regular Sub Pixel Sampling: Not sure what this does re quality & render time

Quality Thershold: 80% - 100%

Please note that l never touch the Texture Filtering setting as l've never seen the benifit base on increase in render times.

Now from my experience you really have to stuff around with the Subray per pixel settings to find a balance of quality and time but if you've got the time to do render tests & time to be able to finalise your final render then this can work.

Just my 2 cents... Chad :)

[augustuslazarus]

Thanks for your reply Chad.

I already started to change the render settings. Render times went up from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours :surprised

I shouldn´t have changed everything a little :rolleyes: Probably not the best idea. I will try again and start with your suggestion...

[augustuslazarus]

Ok, another test is rendering.
When adjusting the settings I was wondering if is importend to turn on "texture antialias" ? Or doesn´t this effect the trees ?

[guardonduty]

Totally not sure what's going on here but I have only once got that flickering issue and MADE only ONE CHANGE..(Vue 6 Menu). Animation-Animation Render Options-Format Options-Changed Compressor to FULL FRAMES...Here's a video that I recently rendered..

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92125

[ggaler]

Not sure if you have found the right settings yet. I have been rendering some samples to see if I can get the flickering to stop. I have had some luck with increasing the subrays per pixel - right now I am testing 75 min / 200 max. I also increased the quality threshold to 80% and anti-aliasing to Sharp.

I think the texture filtering is only useful for certain types of distance problems so I turned that off. I also turned off motion blur and Depth of Field - which I think slow things down a lot.

[augustuslazarus]

mmmhh.... everybody is telling something different :)

Here´s the answer from e-on support:
"This flickering is probably caused by the texture filtering. Instead of Final, you should be using User Settings which gives you more control. In order to change this setting, open the render options, click on the edit button in the anti-aliasing group, and set the texture filtering to 50%, which should be a good starting value. If the render is too smooth, lower the value. If it's too sharp (and flickering), increase it.
You should also try switching to Systematic anti-aliasing mode, which is much more robust regarding animations."

So right now I am trying to combine yours and e-on´s suggestions.
-switched to "systematic"
-increased "texture filtering" to 70%
-subrays per pixel min 4 max 8
-both quality sliders 60%

The animation is already getting better, flickering is getting less obvious. I have to wait now how the last test turns out...

I attached a short part of the animation. Watch the trees in the foreground to see the flickering.

[guardonduty]

I still don't get it. The design is beautiful, but the lighting and clarity is terrible. Can you tell me what your FORMAT Options setting is. Look at msg NO. 5 to get there is you're not sure.


P.S. I am assuming you want to get the same clarity as what you see in the VUE Demo reels.
Thanks

[augustuslazarus]

I am saving each frame with the TIFF format to avoid compression errors. I checked the other formats, but couldn´t find a single format where I can set the compression to "full frames".

In another test I changed the atmoshere, from a spectral model to a standard model and this helped to get rid of the flickering trees. So it´s probably the GI that´s causing the problem. For now I will stick with this solution, because I am running out of time...

[guardonduty]

Augus. I am assuming you added a timeline to the animation. If so, before you render the animation, go to ANIMATION..then to ANIMATION RENDER OPTIONS...look at "CHANNEL FILES tab selection.....you should have COLOR checked...To the right of that do you see FORMAT options...Click that and select and change the compressor option to FULL FRAMES"uncompressed" .

Spectral Sunshine is good....check the "CLASSIC DAY". Just render to .AVI to start with.

[augustuslazarus]

Thanks guardonduty,
I found the format option already. But there is no FULL FRAMES uncompressed option. Depending on your format choice the compressor settings change. I think I tried all of them, but couldn´t find your option :hmm: Which format are you talking about ?

[guardonduty]

.AVI like I stated in my previous post. If you select .AVI to ouput your video, FULL FRAMES will be there as an option. Just try that.

[ggaler]

I will try the "systematic" option - maybe that is what is causing my test to flicker too. I did do rendering without a texture applied and it still flickered like crazy - which is why I was thinking the texture filtering was not really helping. I also turned of indirect illumaniation had a flicker too.

I don't think the full frames is the issue here. As far as the .avi and full frames, this seems like it is only an option if you don't want to render out an image sequence and is only applies to image compression artifacts - which is not the cause of this flickering.

[guardonduty]

Augus. IS this Stadium for a client..or is it just for personal use. IF for personal use I would l love to get it and render it for you. For me, FULL frames was the issue. Making that one compression adjustment and laod one of the spectral atmospheres fixed it for me. Here's a recent render.

[augustuslazarus]

I don´t think that the compression of TIFFs causing any problems. And I won´t render to AVI because I dont´t want to be left with nothing if my computer should crash after rendering the half animation...

Anyway, thanks for your offer guardonduty, I would love to see if you can get better results. But unfortunately it is for an client.

[guardonduty]

Here's that TEST Animation (http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?p=797841#post797841) of my apartments. Rendered at FINAL...NO flickering..CHEck out the size of the FILE. Looks good to me. Comments please.

[ggaler]

guardonduty - I think that your trees are flickering but you cannot tell because the camera is moving fairly fast. On fast shots (moving camera), I can often get Vue to work for the animation - motion blur also hides a lot of flicker too. It is the no or slow camera movements that are hard.

Here is the link to my current test. The trees are still flickering a little - but I think this might be in range of being acceptable. The animation is compressed - but I think it actually flickers a little less than the original. The 72 frames (640x480) took 5 1/2 hours on a dual Xeon no cores. I was averaging around 2-3 hours before I cranked up the advanced effects quality settings. I am going to lower it back down - since I am not seeing much of a difference.

http://www.veryverysmallstudios.com/images/TestImages/VueTest/TreeTest.mov

Here is a screen shot of the settings:

http://www.veryverysmallstudios.com/images/TestImages/VueTest/Settings.gif

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