Rebder quality and speed

#8

Yves-
What do you mean that the multi pass doesnt use AA? Isnt that a bad thing? Isnt AA a good thing for better and realistic images? Id think that multi pass with AA would give us the best image quality. Ive read your photon mapping web site-that is what I like to see. I cant wait to start using it. Ive always thought that AMs render was as good as the other apps-just slow. Now with photon mapping its that much better. :buttrock:
Yves-how do you compare the render out of AM to the others like LW and C4d-like their technology used and final output.

#9

The whole point of the multi-pass renderer is to do AA through multi-pass. Every new pass will jitter the camera position a little bit inside each pixel thus producing AA.

The AA you get with multi-pass is the best you can get. It will AA everything including motion blur, soft shadows, DOF, etc. This is non-adaptive AA though which means that every single pixel gets AA the same as every other pixels even when there is no need for it. The number of passes you select with multi-pass determines the number of samples in the AA. Simple as that.

The non-multi-pass renderer does an adaptive AA which means that AA is computed only where it is needed. The non-multi-pass renderer uses some heuristics to determine where AA is needed. In computer science, heuristics are heuristics which means that they are not always right on spot so there are particular instances where it will not AA properly. This is the main reason why multi-pass was implemented. That is to take care of those situations.

So right now, you have the choice between which type of AA you want to use depending on your particular project. You can try them both and decide.

Using multi-pass with AA does not make any sense. It would be a waste of time and CPU power. At 9 passes, the AA is pretty good. Adding AA over that would mean that some pixels would get 144 samples for AA and the worst case would get 576 samples for AA which is totally pointless.

As for comparing different outputs. To me, it is only relevent for someone who is looking for a very specific type of look in the render. If I where looking at some other artist render and whishing to get that render in A:M then maybe I would start comparing. This is not my case. I’m not trying to reproduce the LW look or the C4D look or such artist look who happens to use LW or C4D or whatever like that. I try to develop my own look and this look is definitely not photorealism. And A:M have everything I might need for that. I remember, a few years ago, a A:M user had posted some stills and animations with a very specific, stylised and beautifull look. It was all black and white with extremely harsh light and shadows. I really liked that. Another example would be the work of Sinj or Jimmy Maidens with his “Boring 3D” work. But I’m not trying to replicate their look. I am trying to develop my own stylized look which might explain why, to me, this question is kind of moot.

Yves Poissant

#10

Also, about the slowness of A:M render. As David pointed, in a typical 3D project, the render time is a small part of the project. Usually, the time it takes to model, texture, light and animate is way much more important than that. And for the price of either LW or C4D, you could buy A:M with a 3 computer dongle and 1 or 2 additional 400$ - 500$ computers to do the renders. That’s what I do. I own a full dongle version and when I have a render job to do, I hook all the computers I have on the network.

Oh!, and I wanted to add to my short list of stylized renders the work of Dusan Kastelic with his “Not for kids under 15” work.

To me, it is much more important to develop a recognizable style. But that is my own situation. I understand that for other, the goal might be different.

Yves Poissant

#11

Oh wow!. I just became a “veteran”!

Yves

#12

Hey neat so did I… didn’t even notice it happen. :applause:

Thanks for the information on the difference between Multi-Pass and normal AA. I must admit that I typically run the Multi-Pass at 16 passes unless I am doing some light trick that requires more (you don’t get smooth shadows from a tube light with less than 32 in my experience.)

-David

#13

Originally posted by Obnomauk
(you don’t get smooth shadows from a tube light with less than 32 in my experience.)

True. And it also depends on the length of your light too. Longer tubes or areas will require more passes. Same thing for motion blur. A longer blur will require more passes.

And talking about lights, with skylight rigs and softshadows, the multi-pass will give similar results at lower render time than using the non-multipass render.

Yves Poissant

#14

[QUOTE
I mean just look at this thing: Maxxon IK Chain thing in this day and age, setting up a leg has no excuse to be this complicated.
QUOTE]

Yea, I have to agree there…BUT…y’know I was reading the Cinema docs last night and one of the importers they have is for .bvh data which AM exports. So I’m thinking just do all you animations in AM and import them into Cinema for rendering.

#15

Originally posted by Obnomauk
[B]It may be close… but have you really looked at 10.5 of A:M? I think even Wegg has said that Messiah isn’t as easy as A:M. Personally they have at least one major problem with Messiah that I can’t overlook… No mac version. :stuck_out_tongue:

[/B]

Well for me. . . the one MAJOR problem with AM is stability. I am trying my hardest to get back into AM on my free time but every time it crashes. . . its just a major turn off and I usually flip back over to the latest Messiah betas.

The crashes are random. . . they are un-repeatable and they are so amazingly frustrating that I can’t imagine using AM as my daily “hammer”.

Messiah is harder, yes, but it also has tools that allow me to hide all that complexity during the animation stage of production allowing the creativity to flow.

And those extra few hours up front have NEVER lasted as long as it would take to get a decent flicker free, black dot free render out of AM.

I am very happy that there are improvements but it will be a while before I can recomend it to anyone but the most casual patient 3D enthusiasts.

#16

Originally posted by ewdean
y’know I was reading the Cinema docs last night and one of the importers they have is for .bvh data which AM exports. So I’m thinking just do all you animations in AM and import them into Cinema for rendering.

I don’t see anything wrong with treating A:M as another tool. It excels at animating. Since you can export .bvh files, why not. I’m guessing you could save time by doing smaller proxy models in A:M, animate them and transfer that resulting .bvh data to be used by whatever polygon models you want in the package you want, making sure all the bones are relevant, etc.

In another thread here, someone mentioned having to run A:M’s .bvh data through Life Forms, before using it in another app, so that may be something to look out for or ask around.

Kevin

#17

Here’s the thread…

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=79283&perpage=15&highlight=bvh&pagenumber=3

#18

I agree with you-why be someone else and copy their work-wheres the fun in that. Learn from them but dont be them. But like me Im sure there are alot of newbies who want to know that the renders in 10.5 can be as real and as good as LW and C4d. I have seen some stuff-like Fabrece Favre-which are so beautiful. With photon mapping I think you can get the realistic look of other renders-its up to the artist to work hard. Maybe some people dont want AM to be considerd pro-so will never believe that Hash can do do real pro renders. I think rendering in passes and like you use -netrender-goes a long way to speeding up the render. I would love a faster render-but what I think is more important-is the tools that are there will let the artist get their vision out!:thumbsup:

#19

I guess that I have a slightly un-healthy obsession with render speed. It is very true that crashes are more time wasting and certainly more annoying. Today I made a project for reporting a bug. I was saving it when AM hang! Well, that bug won’t get reported now, not by me anyway.

I have the following problem though:

I want to use motion blur and particularly depth of field.
I find that 16x multipass is really nice. 9xmultipass is ok but when I use 16 I know that everything will look fine.

I would really like to use the new hair as would others that I know.

I am into my atmospheric lighting and need decent soft shadows.

I don’t want to have to worry about z-buffer artefacts (eg bits of shadow missing) so raytraced seems to be the way to go for this reason alone.

I have an AMD 2400 which is no slouch but when the above are combined, I find that render times get to a level where I have to make big compromises.

Having said all that, by the time I have made an animation of any length, we will be on AM V16 and 3000Mhz computers will be given away with breakfast cereal.

#20

Originally posted by ewdean
[B][QUOTE
I mean just look at this thing: Maxxon IK Chain thing in this day and age, setting up a leg has no excuse to be this complicated.
QUOTE]

Yea, I have to agree there…BUT…y’know I was reading the Cinema docs last night and one of the importers they have is for .bvh data which AM exports. So I’m thinking just do all you animations in AM and import them into Cinema for rendering. [/B]

Yeah and that video does not show Mocca in the right light. It is really not that hard, I think they were just trying to show to much.

#21

John couldnt you do the motion blur in After Effects? This would speed things up. I think you could also play with shadows in After Effects to.

So you can turn “off” AA before you use multi pass?

I asked my friend who uses C4d about Mocca. He just got it and learning it. But he said it was really sweet but he has seen AM in action-he still thinks AM is better. For him he cant think in splines-patches. He likes the C4d way-he didnt say it was better-just different. Like he used LW but hated it. Also hated Max but loves C4d. It makes sens to him just like Hash makes sense to me but I just cant get C4d. To each their own!:slight_smile:

#22

Originally posted by binder3d
[B]John couldnt you do the motion blur in After Effects? This would speed things up. I think you could also play with shadows in After Effects to.

So you can turn “off” AA before you use multi pass?
[/B]

I don’t have after effects. How much does it cost?

I Pequod leant me Aura DV on a coverdisc but havn’t installed it yet. Is it any good?

Oh, you can’t turn off AA in multipass (unless you are using just one pass). I could render in the standard renderer though.

#23

John
After Effects is about $700 but if you have a student ID-its about $300. Never used Aura but from what I read and people I talk to-After Effects is a pp all 3d artists should have. There are others-but way more money to!

#24

I’d really love to get into that Digital Fusion one from eyeon. It can apparently do anything AE can and more. They throw the baby version in free with every LW purchase/upgrade. Sounds pretty spiffy from everything I have read and would probably complement AM just as well as AE would.

#25

Thanks for the advice - I will look into this area of things. However I don’t fancy doing all that stuff by hand. I might prefer waiting for the computer to render it all for me and be able to animate the effects in AM.

Oh, one thing that people should be aware of if they are using soft shadows is the new “Minimum Medium Maximum” post filter. It can be used for removing isolated pixels (when used with its standard settings). It is certainly good for stills and hopefully animatoin too.

#26

Originally posted by John Keates
Oh, you can’t turn off AA in multipass (unless you are using just one pass). I could render in the standard renderer though.

Actually AA is off by default in the Multi-Pass render what you Can’t do is turn it on. But if what you are looking for is aliased edges then No you can’t.

For Multi-Pass rendering both AA and oversample are not needed. (although if you are getting some shimmers rendering 200% in size putting a .7 gaussian blur and then scaling the image down to size will fix a lot of them.)

Yves knows much more about this than I do, and his previous posts pretty clearly indicate what the difference between the Anti-Aliasing method of the Base render does vs. the Point Sample method of the Multi-Pass render.

AE is a bit pricey but generally worth it… if you don’t like slow renders though, AE will drive you to drink, especially with complicated compositions. And Adobe’s complete lack of support for Alti-Vec on the mac version gets my dander up… not quite enough to save the $5,000 for shake yet but give em some time I guess…
-David Rogers

#27

Oops, I am not making myself clear again. When I say that you can’t turn AA off in multipass, I meant that there isn’t a button for it and it is there automatically unless you use just one pass. That is what I meant to say - or something allong those lines that actually makes sense. Well, lets just say that I know about the whole multipass thing anyway.

Good job that I’m not the one writing a book :wink: