Topics

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[Max] I need help! / Denoiser Freezing Random frames at the end of the process

« on: 2021-08-16, 13:55:29 »

Hi all,

Hoping for some pointers on an annoying issue i'm having and trying to narrow down the cause. I'm getting random freezes at the end of the denoiser process on final renders which i have to end task and restart the frame. It seems to be sporadic and doesn't happen to any particular file and happens across the board randomly whether rendering 1080 animation frames or hi res stills. It happens on both detailed interiors and exterior scenes with HDRI or Sun&Sky. I can't reproduce the issue at will, it either happens or doesn't which is causing me no end of frustration especially when leaving sequences unattended over the weekend on the "farm". The crash can happen when rendering local or using the farm. The only common thing is that its gets to the last of the denoiser passes and hangs without saving. The PC is still responsive, Its just max that sits there doing nothing. It doesn't flag as an error on the render manager either as it just says "working" because as far as its aware it chugging away on the frame. I'm at a bit of a loss and hope someone can give me a push in the right direction.

I'm running:
- Corona 7
- 3DS Max 2021.1 (I'm going to update to 2021.2 to see if that helps. I usually wait until patch one is applied to max before updating to the new one)
- TR 3990x
- 128gb RAM
- Pulze.io scene manager and render manager

Thanks for any help anyone can offer. Any further questions or info needed just ask away.

Curtis

2

[Max] I need help! / Animated Forest Pack & Scene Parsing/prep times

« on: 2021-06-18, 11:42:56 »

Hey All,

I was hoping someone may be able to help with this issue or have come across it before in their travels.

I've a fairly straight forward garden scene. I have some fairly high poly animated tree proxies that I have scattered using latest Forest pack and suffering with large parsing times. Use Max 2021, Corona 6.0 (use an AMD3990x and had issues with hotfix 0.1 and 0.2 halfling render times, I've been snowed under so not had time to chase this issue), 128gb ram.

I've narrowed the issue down to the FPP scatters of the animated proxies. If I use any other mode other than disabled or follow, Parsing and preparing geometry times go from 2 minutes - 10 minutes. Which is a lot of time to suck up per frame.

This could easily be my fault in something I've done, or a FPP issue rather than a corona issue but thought id put it out there and see if anyone has come across it. I'm away to post in Itoo forum as well to see if I can sort it. I'm rendering a test animation, not he final so will stick with "Follow" for these and see how it looks. May be fine, but worth finding out a weakness if its there and fixing for the future as randomisation would be nice.

If anyone needs more info, happy to provide. Thanks in advance.

3

Gallery / LINEA by The Kitchen Depot

« on: 2021-06-02, 00:55:10 »

We were approached by the Kitchen Depot Glasgow and commissioned to produce CGI visuals to support the launch of their new high end brand, LINEA.

Each environment was created as a 3D digital set that we could use to stage compelling and beautiful photographic style shots of the products, the hardest part was narrowing down which shots we felt elevated and communicated the spaces, products and materials best from a seller and consumer standpoint. With showrooms difficult to attend due to social distancing we wanted these images to create a window for potential customers to really see what these kitchens could be like in realistic spaces to allow them to make the choices that matter to them.

Finally, we created a short animation to string all of the environments in to one narrative, only showcasing the kitchen environments for spatial consistency. We doubled down on The Kitchen Depot’s established brand of creating premium quality kitchens for a lifetime. With the pandemic raging, animation was the perfect alternative to the usual film route. We tried to evoke a sense of time and place, that each kitchen subtly communicated special moments. Real moments that real people experience. The breakfast rush, a quiet coffee, kids taking over, or some down time on the couch in the evening. Without real actors we conveyed this with the objects left behind, like snapshots in time.

During such a difficult period in the global pandemic it was a privilege working so closely with a local family run business that puts so much behind the products they are delivering. We loved helping to shape this in every way.

Below you will see a selection of the content we produced to support this launch. The project was an absolute joy to work on from start to finish!

4

Work in Progress/Tests / Chance - Spaceman WIP

« on: 2021-01-18, 22:42:46 »

Hi everyone,

I had this idea to create something left field from my everyday and it wouldn't go away, so I started this.

As my previous personal project it revolves around music and something a little retro/synthwave inspired. I'm going to create an animation with this but these are more a quick proof of concept 3d sketch or style frame of where I want to take it. I'll try to post more up as I go.

The astronaut model was picked up off CGtrader and I edited the shaders primarily to suit my needs, before rigging it. That was no fun considering the mesh density but given this started out as a sketch I didn't want to go through the whole process of retopology etc....I may pay for that later.

These are straight out the frame buffer with some tonemapping. No photoshop yet.

I'm quite excited by this one and where its headed....here hoping I can get what i have in my head done without too much project creep kicking in.

Thanks for looking,

Curtis

5

Gallery / Christmas in the Woods

« on: 2020-12-18, 19:20:30 »

A project i have in the works that I adapted last minute to use as christmas images. I had also planned to do something much grander for Christmas but unfortunately/fortunately commissioned work took all my free time away.

I have bigger plans for this project in the future but enjoyed making these anyway. Hope you like them.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a great festive break and get those feat up in preparation for a busy 2021.

6

Gallery / Waverunner

« on: 2020-12-15, 12:13:53 »

Hi everyone,

This is a project I did to play around with a slightly different genre than my usual of architecture, engineering and products. I had this idea of a 80s inspired car chase music video set to one my favourite music genres Synthwave. I always get massive inspiration from this genre of music, maybe because it taps in to my childhood or something. So I set about storyboarding and creating this short piece set to one of my favourite tracks "Turbokiller" by Carpenter Brut. I also used it as a way to test some procedural city building using Itoo Railclone and Forest pack as well as to do all my compositing using Black Magic Designs Fusion and my editing in Davinci Resolve having mainly been using Adobe for most of my post needs to date. Its always fun to push yourself and learn something new when doing these personal projects. Usually in Archviz we would try and do as much as we can in a single render but for this i did a more VFX orientated workflow and rendered in passes to achieve the specific control i was looking for.

Hope you like it, I certainly had a blast making it. Feel free to ask any questions if you have any.

Before anyone asks, I did seek and obtain permission from Frank Hueso (Carpenter Brut) and the publisher NoQuarter Productions who kindly let me use the track as long as I'm not selling it or making money from it and of course accredit appropriately. As this is a personal learning project i was free to use it.

All the music is copyright of NoQuarter Productions.

7

Gallery / San Francisco Office Fitout

« on: 2020-11-11, 12:24:21 »

An animation and selection of images produced of an office development, in San Francisco of all places. The original project was finished a while back but wasn't something I was allowed to share. So rather than see a great location and space stay in the dark, the entire space was redesigned, rebuilt and appropriated for a cool new shareable lease on life. Its literally a different space now. Experimented a little with using Anima and Mixamo tastefully in certain shots. Some worked reasonably well to add some motion in the middle ground, some in the foreground forced re-renders as they were less than ideal with slightly "off" movement and still didn't look right. Was worth a try. The 4D people are awesome but didn't have many that fit the bill on this occasion.

Enjoyed putting this one together and wanted to share it.