Rebder quality and speed

#3

AM’s renderer is fine as long as you are not trying to do a complex sceen fast. AM can do some fine renders as long as you know how, the speed if the render is a different story. Sure every app slows down when you add things like reflections and fog and shadows ect ect ect but AM’s slows down more the C4D or LW.

AM’s render and AM in general does not play well with others.

You want to see something cool go to:
http://www.maxon.net/index_e.html

click on products then release 8 and click on
“After Effects Integration” on the left its a quicktime files and shows you what playing well with others is all about. Plus the time saved if you need to make changes is staggering. You wont need to render anything out again.

#4

Of Course I would point out that when you are actually animating a scene A:M is the fastest and best program out there to do the animation… So the time lost in one area is gained in another. Also 99% of the quality issues I have had with A:M have cleared up in 10.5 so it really is just a matter of speed, and rendering in A:M is not the fastest. The real question needs to be: do i want to animate or do stills and which toolset is more important to me? If you want to just make stills… well take your pick just about every app out there can do stills it’s really when you need to do more than static images that the tools of A:M come into their own

If you know how to do it, though, you can just set up layers for rendering and pop em into your compositing app to get the same AE integration that C4D shows on their site.

Setting up a chor to do layered renders is very easy (IMHO) and provides the same base functionality. If you need camera tracking that’s a little harder to get out of A:M, but AE has tools for that built in. Rendering in layers overcomes most of the speed roadblocks by giving the render small chunks to work with at a time. Ten little chunks will render faster than the whole thing in one pass and your time to set it up is more than compensated… (of course if anyone wants to write an applescript to set up the chors automatically and build a renderpool I wouldn’t complain :slight_smile: )

Once you have the layers Quality is less of an issue and you have more control over… well… everything. BUT you have to learn three sets of skills: 1) Animation and all the related skills to that lighting modeling texturing etc. 2) compositing and 3) Project organization. Project organization is perhaps the most important of the three… you can have a lot of files when you work this way and you have to be able to keep tack of what goes where…

Multi-Pass (in the A:M sense) is going to be slower… you are rendering the image with the same renderer More Than Once… logic then follows that it will take X times longer to render where X is the number of Passes.

as far as Cinema 4D and LW go… eh you can keep em… unless they have made some sort of revolutionary steps in usability since last I saw them I’d still rather get dental work than animate in either of them. 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.

-David Rogers

#5

Originally posted by Obnomauk
[B]
as far as Cinema 4D and LW go… eh you can keep em… unless they have made some sort of revolutionary steps in usability since last I saw them I’d still rather get dental work than animate in either of them. 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.

-David Rogers [/B]

Yeah Dave that video does not show how easy it really is to set up, I think they were trying to get to much into it. All you really need in that video is the knee effector and foot effector the rest was put in there just to show it.

That mocca module is pretty much like AM’s constraints they are just called other things. AM is still easier to animate in but other apps are catching up and passing it pretty fast. Have you looked at the new release of Messiah? It has some dame cool things the AM is still trying to get and pretty easy to setup too.

#6

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:

The thing is that most programs have five bazzillion tools when what they really need to do is just simplify and improve the ones you actually use. And for most of them character animation is never the soul focus of the program. I’ve looked at a lot of 3D software, i’ve paid for two packages, I use one. The other I bought so that I could show I had it so that I could get a particular gig (on which I then used A:M and the client never even knew the difference) and haven’t so much as launched since the first meeting with the client. :shrug:

I’m a pretty smart fellow and can figure out some fairly obtuse things if I have to… but why have to when there are better options available… i mean I might as well switch to Linux on the desktop and run blender…

#7

Originally posted by Obnomauk
Multi-Pass (in the A:M sense) is going to be slower… you are rendering the image with the same renderer More Than Once… logic then follows that it will take X times longer to render where X is the number of Passes.

I wanted to add this little bit of information: The renderer used in multi-pass is a version of the renderer which is stripped from all the AA processing so it is actually much faster than the non-multi-pass renderer. My tests with both renderers when A:M was in very early alpha state showed that the multi-pass renderer is about 9 times faster (if I remember right) than the non-milti-pass one. At the time I posted the results here on CgTalk.

How much faster depends on the complexity of the AA to be performed. My scene was rather simple in term of geometry and had no materials and no roughness so there is the potential for even better improvement with more complex scenes geometrywise and more roughness etc.

Yves Poissant

#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.