Flickering woes...Vue rant

#1

I’ve been working on a short animation that I intended to add to my demo reel (using Vue 5 Inf), to demonstrate proficiency in Vue, but flickering has made a quick two day project into a rigorous exercise in futility and patience testing.
I’ve tried most tricks, except jacking the AA and quality settings through the roof since the render times would be intolerable. I noticed that its far quicker for me to render the animation sequence on one machine than to use HyperVue (HyperSLOW is what it ought to be called), and had 2 crashes using HyperSLOW_Vue resulting in a loss of ALL frames. Even the manual says you can’t recover files if the net render job is canceled or interupted. WTFunk?!!!
Why even have the damn thing? Compared to other network management software this is worth as much as a damn plastic toy…literally.

One thing I’ve come to realize is that Vue is the environment equivalent to Poser. It promises a good deal, but at the end of the day, it’s extremely difficult to get anything remotely believable out of it. Like Poser, it screams “Hey, Im CG…I’m really bad CG!” And like Poser there are some uses for it here and there, but by and large, I can’t see it being used much for everyday production. I bought 5 Infinite when it first came out, and have worked in it quite a bit off and on since (bought and viewed all of the AsileFX DVDs), so I consider myself a relatively advanced user, but it finally dawned on me that it takes just too damn much work and there are just too many limitations with it…IMHO, that time is better spent setting your scenes up in your main programs like Max or Maya, and using forresting plugins or imported plants with either placement via particles or scatter modifier. At least this way you have much more rendering control and options.
Having said all of that…has anyone come up with any good solutions in post for minimizing the visible flicker. I’m trying in Combustion every trick I can think of (rendered the files in RPF and try to isolate the trouble spots with GBuffer Object or GBuffer Material selections) and about the only option is to isolate the areas and blur the heck out of it, along with color correction…but this just removes alot of the edge lighting that you normally want. A huge tradeoff. Vue sucks. Did I say that already? And I tried the Vue 6 PLE. A small improvement overall, but much of the same headaches.
To anyone out there who’s considering a purchase of Vue…just be warned. For still images only, you may find it your cup of tea…but for animations, as New Yorkers would say…“Fa’ Getta’ Bout it!” :shrug:

#2

I’am in the same boat with you the flickering is a big pain. I have tried every setting in the book to about the only thing I could come up with is double the the size and then reduce to the size you want. Vue 6 was suppose to fix this problem but I don’t see it.

All out war on Flickering
http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5649

What they gave:

Hi,

Flickering can be due to several things: high frequency textures, very thin moving geometry, poorly sampled volumetric effects, etc. To reduce flickering, you have no choice but increase anti-aliasing settings to force Vue to supersample each pixel. This will of course raise rendering time, this is unavoidable.

So to be able to tweak anti-aliasing settings manually, you shall switch to User Settings render mode, edit the anti-aliasing options, and play with the min / max rays per pixel, as well as the contrast threshold value, which will be used to adaptively refine each pixel rendering, trying to put the efforts only where it is needed.

Best regards.
John Canver

#3

Rendering time goes hand and hand with quality, and this is not a Vue issue, just part of the 3D FX world. There is no way around it. Even a render farm, the render times is masked by a multitude of computers, but the hit is still there.

Our personal experiences are that adaptive anti aliasing is bad.

I posted in another thread, examples of how to get better results from your 3D packages that are universal techniques in shorter render times.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5026855&postcount=43

However, Vue adds render time, higher quality adds render time and how you deal with it achieves great results. Its like polygons, you can throw a few million polygons in a scene and it will take forever to render, but you can also normal map an object and use your polygons smartly and you can achieve better results faster. You have to be an artist at optimizing as well.

I hope you keep working on it because Vue can add a unique element to your scenes and really the extra quality is worth it.

M

#4

I guess you are so very right on that one.

#5

Not sure if you’re just no good at searching out answers, but there are STICKY threads on this subject all over different Vue forums on the web. And, in a recent newsletter from Vue they state:

Part 1: How to reduce flickering and/or noise in animations:
Introducing the Texture Filtering render setting!

Texture Filtering is an essential render setting to reduce noise and flickering that can arise because of high frequency textures (components of materials that exhibit very fine detail, usually finer than the size of a pixel). When used properly, it will lower the needs for strong object anti-aliasing (thus speeding up the render), and greatly reduce texture flickering.

Where to find it:

It can be accessed via the anti-aliasing options dialog, just above texture anti-aliasing options. This setting is always accessible, even for render presets. Its value is editable through a slider that ranges from 0 to 100%.

How it works:

This value corresponds to the size of the filter applied over textures during render. Ideally, this filter should always have the size of a pixel, so that all texture detail contained in each pixel is properly taken into account during texture evaluation. This corresponds to a value of 50% for Texture Filtering. If you specify a lower value, textures will be sharper but with more noise and/or flickering. If you specify a higher value, noise will be smoothed out but textures will appear blurred.

In practice:

You should tweak the value regarding your specific needs. In practice, the smallest value that yields good-enough results should be used. From our own experience, a default value of 33% usually does the trick.

Texture Filtering will influence two components at render:

  1. Bitmaps: for each bitmap used in materials, if you edit its texture map node via the function editor, you will see a flag named “allow mip-mapping”, which is checked by default. When this flag is checked, and if Texture Filtering has a non zero value, corresponding bitmaps will be pre-filtered just before rendering. Thus, at render time, distant bitmaps won’t exhibit any noise or flickering. This is particularly useful when rendering animated plants, especially for distant ones. You will enjoy much smoother results, and a great reduction in flickering. As specified above, a value for Texture Filtering of 33% will generally produce the best results.

  2. Generic texture anti-aliasing: when texture anti-aliasing is enabled, the Texture Filtering value will drive the size of the filter used by the texture anti-aliasing process, just like for bitmaps. This is very important because if texture anti-aliasing is enabled but Texture Filtering is set to 0%, you won’t notice any improvement. Just like for bitmaps, a value of 33% is generally ideal for Texture Filtering used along with texture anti-aliasing.

#6

I don’t know who you are refering to as no good me or the other guy but saw it thanks… The only thing I see wrong with texture filtering at 33% is it changes the color or rather lightens the plants and makes them look like a snowball. It upset one of the plants for some reason.

#7

dupe post so I removed it.

#8

Nope, not directed at you. It was meant for dnash who said:

To anyone out there who’s considering a purchase of Vue…just be warned. For still images only, you may find it your cup of tea…but for animations, as New Yorkers would say…“Fa’ Getta’ Bout it!”

Perhaps I was a bit harsh, but really, there are multiple threads on this topic over at C3D, e-ons own forum, and Renderosity as well. To take pot shots at a vendors software (and thus their livelihood) with one’s only claim to expertise being “AisleFX” tutorials (sheesh) doesn’t sit well with many of us old time Vue users.

I’m the first to admit, Vue isn’t easy to work with for some. But, there are those of us around, especially in other forums like Rendo and C3D, who are willing to help a guy out-- but we certainly expect a modicum of civility in posting one’s problem.

Chances are, a blatant rant like his, might not get much of a reply-- though I suppose this time it did.

#9

I have noticed that some scenes will produce flicker, while others won’t. It doesn’t seem to be anyone thing that causes it, but perhaps a combination. E-on’s texture filtering advice doesn’t always work, and all it’s really doing is applying blur to the pixels.

Although it can be frustrating, it can usually be fixed, but you do need to know how to setup a scene, and how to manipulate the render settings. Often to get the render setting right to avoid flicker will result in longer render times, and that does go along with the old adage that higher quality results in longer render times. The alternative is to be very careful with your textures, lighting and scene setup to minimise flicker in the first place.

I hope it will get easier in future versions of Vue, but for now just know that it can be done with the right knowledge, and for the proof of that you just have to look at the Vue 6 show reels created by Philippe Bouyer. They demonstrate that in the right hands, Vue is an amazing application.

Just because you don’t know how to use it, doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with it!

#10

I was frustrated not just with the flicker but also the network rendering system that’s a pitiful excuse, and even the manual states that if there is an interuption in the job you essentially lose ALL the frames. Plus it takes 2-3 times as long for each machine to render a single frame than if you just rendered it on one machine without RenderCow. You want to tell me I’m wrong? I’m listening. I’d really like to be proved wrong, but I doubt it.
The reason I mentioned AsileFX’s DVD’s was to mention that I went through the most thorough training available at the time (alot better than the manual and website tutorials), and it helped me get up to speed. I read the manual’s advice on reducing flicker after first noticing it, and that is essentially what you posted…that I have to suck it up and accept insane render times to get decent output. I stand by my comments, I tried to use it on a Mayfield Ice Cream ad project 2yrs ago, and the render times were way too prohibitive…ended up importing plants in to get the job done with Mental Ray.
If this were as professional as you claim, more studios would be using it for regular production. I bet there are many license holders that experience the same frustrations and just say screw it…we don’t have this kind of time to wrestle with this thing to get believable results and find the flickering just too much of a problem…not to metion the render times it would take to get good results and no flickering.
If Vue would hire someone to build a decent render management program, then it might take some of the sting out of the render times, but as it stands…render cow is appropriately named. Fire it up and have a cow at how slow the damn thing is…have another when it crashes after rendering for a day and a half.

#11

OK first off, no one should be knocking you for learning from the AsileFX’s DVD’s, although they are no substitution for experience as I’m sure you appreciate.

I don’t think any regular Vue user would say that Vue is 100% trouble free. I’m not sure what you are talking about with the network rendering taking longer over a network than when running stand alone on a single machine. That just isn’t true at all! Also I have managed to recover frames from a crashed render before now. However, Hypervue does crash some times, and certainly isn’t the best network renderer I’ve worked with! Normally when it crashes there is a good reason for it though, such as memory issues with your scene, but I will agree, it could do with better error handling to tell you politely that there is going to be a problem with the render, with out just crashing, and before the render has started! Also better management of rendered frames, and some further enhancements would be great too, and I’m sure in time these will be implemented.

The flicker issue though mostly relates to ecos and solid growth plants. That’s because these are far more complex than billboard plants. If you render a scene in any application including Vue, using billboard plants you will get faster results, but for the extra quality and realism you get from ecos and solid growth plants within vue, as with any increase in quality, you also have to suffer an increase in render times. You will find many threads on this subject, and it is Vue’s Achilles heel right now, and one that most users hope will be improved soon, but the bottom line is there are studios and high end users producing flicker free animations with Vue, and if you want ecos and solid growth plants, then Vue is the only application that can give you that.

And yes, there are studios using Vue right now, and probably many more waiting in the wings for some of the issues we have discussed here to be improved.

You should also consider upgrading to Vue 6.6 (I think it is now), as you will never see any improvements if you keep using 5! I always run the latest version here, things do get fixed and improved. I also find that keeping in with the e-on tech guys gets issues dealt with quickly via updates too!

#12

Hi Al,

It was me who was knocking, but not him, rather the AsileFX’s DVD’s, which IMO, are poor in quality and even worse in customer support. And…it’s not only my opinion, but others also have said similar things about them. I much prefer the free tutes over at GeekAtPlay–they’re much higher quality, focused on results, and free to boot!

best,

Chipp

#13

Yep I’m right with you there. I have some AsileFX DVDs, and they are pretty lame. The GeekAtPlay tutorials, are very good, and as you say, they are great value too! :slight_smile:

#14

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.