Hi everyone, this is a bit long:
I am running into some trouble using Corona to render an animation with a landscape that is supposed to have blowing wind animating trees.
I am hoping I can continue to use corona in a situation like this, I've had some people telling me to forget about it and use V-Ray, as it works more efficiently with Itoo Forestpack Pro, allowing for shifting animation frames for each instance in the Forestpack Objects.
I will try to resume as best as I can the issue and hopefully you went through some jobs that would require an articulation of several packages of automation for landscaping:
1 - The Forestpack Pro animation features in corona work in a very limited way
Apparently, we cannot create Corona Proxies or Pointcached geometries together with the animation function in FPP. According to the developers in itoo, the Corona Implementation has been done by Render Legion using the FPP SDK and the FPP animation is or was a VRay Only function. I read a post from 2017 where this was true, I don't quite know what is going on in this area now.
If it still doesn't work, this basically makes FPP an excellent tool for still images in corona (still annoying that you can't hand fix the scatter while using interactive render because everything dissapears while rendering and you can't select items), but little else can be done when animating full blown vegetation, unless you want to see 2 trees/shrubs having the exact same animation on each frame.
If this is still true, how do we use all of the nice Landscape functionalities within FPP (Color Map variations, animation variations, etc) and still use Corona for a Landscape Animation? Anyone has a solution?
Here's a possible fix (with a massive caveat?)
I thought of using FPP to scatter trees around as proxies, and then use the excellent Zorb Modifier Modifier to randomize the proxy frame offset for each of the tree proxies - but I am wondering whether this comes with a caveat? - Does it mean that each of the instances need to be individualized for this to work properly and thus destroy the purpose of having proxies?
Using this method wouldn't they'd have to be loaded into memory every single instance, eating up any available free ram in the renderslaves?
Have you had to go through something like this? I have seen an excellent animation Ludvik did some time ago, which was sort of a remake of a game, but I can't remember exactly the name to check it again. Did he use only Corona Scatter to get vegetation across the set? I don't recal seeing it animated though... - I messaged him about his solution for it, but no answer so far... :(
2 - Rendertimes:
I understand UHD Cache success rate is highly scene dependent, it would probably be a lot higher on interior scenes.
In order to get a clean frame I think I should aim for about 5% Noise level, but it is taking forever to get there.
In a situation like this, what optimization steps would you follow? Do you have any reference or example that can be used in a situation like this?
Should I try to reduce the polycount on the vegetation, turn off reflections wherever possible to achieve a cleaner output? I have started doing that but I don't manage to shave off a lot of time, and things start looking eerily fake, so I reset those...
Most of the noise is coming from the sunlight (I can see it separately in the sun pass in lightmixer), do you think if I would use an HDRI Light instead of the Corona Sun+Sky combo I could get a cleaner overall render?
I know I would have less control over light balance and shadow definition, but it is getting quite heavy to get a clean render...
I attached a couple of images with the different light passes, and also the stats pane, I hope it will help to get some suggestions from those of you who are more experienced with animating something like this using corona. (Pay no mind to the silly runner, he's there for scale)
Thanks in advance if you spare some time to write back a little bit about this, it would be greatly appreciated if you guys could shed some light on this - I'd love to use corona to render this out, I'd prefer to stick to my guns than going back to V-Ray again :)
PS: Here's the type of shot I'd like to get:
(should be live in a few minutes, if you're seeing it just after I press the send button).
It's meant to be done with nearly still cameras or some slow pans, a few particles in the air maybe, and of course, the landscape is not yet designed and it is still to be finished by the Landscaping Team.
Have a good one,
Thank you!
R.
