Messages

16

General CG Discussion / Re: 4K and 8K resolution. New challenges?

« on: 2020-09-26, 01:29:10 »

I work at a a major VFX facility (700+ employees). For shows that deliver at 4k+, what we now do is that all departments that create images all work at half res (2k). Then once we have gotten a creative approval from the client for a shot, a set of 4k renders are then triggered at the end. Though, not all passes are selected for a 4k re-render, for example a dust pass may still be good enough at 2k. The new 4k comp is then delivered to the client as a 'tech' update. We found the trade off of re-rendering 4k versions of existing renders to be ore efficient that every department working at 4k from the beginning.

Btw, 4k is not actually a standard for films with an aim to release theatrically, a great deal of them are still native 2k. Ironically, most of the shows we work on at 4k res are mainly for the streamers, where people are watching from their phones most of the time, which seems a bit overkill.

17

General CG Discussion / Re: Local vs. Network setting for rendering

« on: 2020-09-26, 01:12:45 »

I have a NAS that stores everything. Then on my workstation and render nodes I set up a system that localises from the NAS, files with specific extensions only (.cgeo, .tif, .pc2, etc.) that ones once a day.

The reasoning behind this that I offset a lot of my network traffic to happen at times other than when all my render nodes start working on a job. So that by the time they are ready to render a scene, 95% of the assets are already localised, and the nodes are not all hammering away at the same files on the network.

18

General CG Discussion / Re: Saving large Max files over network

« on: 2020-09-26, 00:57:15 »

Honestly you'd be far better getting a small used rack mount server like a Dell poweredge or something similar

Agreed. Or for a small number of users (which you have mentioned it's the three of you), you could even go for a dedicated NAS box from QNap or similar. I use a NAS that runs on Linux (32tb) and have no problems saving huge Max files over my network (1 workstation + 3 render nodes).

19

[Max] I need help! / Re: Animation export and editing advice

« on: 2020-08-13, 00:37:34 »

You can generally get away with a higher noise level limit when rendering animation. For the short film I am making (trailer below), I have settled on 8% with the default level of denoising. In motion you can hardly tell the difference if the noise level limit was 8% or 3%. Plus if you still have some fireflies left over, some post denoising in your comp program always works too.

As for files, I use 16it exr's, with all AOV's set as individual files, NOT multi-channel exr's. As sometimes I use the AOV's, but sometimes I don't, so I have the option of having my comp render faster by simply using the beauty pass.

My film is about 10,500 frames, averaging 3 - 4 render layers per shot, which average around 25 AOV's per render layer = lot's of data. When I finish it later this year, I will be able to provide a deep dive on all of the metrics.

20

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: Njen's 'Cyan Eyed' work in progress thread (animated short film)

« on: 2020-07-07, 05:50:32 »

CYAN EYED - Official Trailer
The time is finally here! In preparation for a release later this year, watch this trailer to get you excited for steampunk themed action and adventure! All non-environment render elements are all rendered with Corona!

This labour of love from over 100 people needs your help, so if everyone who reads this can give this a share, we would appreciate it very much! Enjoy!

21

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: Njen's 'Cyan Eyed' work in progress thread (animated short film)

« on: 2020-07-07, 03:54:30 »

This is about to start in a few minutes!

22

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: Njen's 'Cyan Eyed' work in progress thread (animated short film)

« on: 2020-07-06, 22:12:49 »

@Fluss: I do want to release a making of soon after the release of the film later this year.
@artofcharly: Woohoo! Not long to go now.

The world premiere of the trailer for Cyan Eyed will be announced in 6 hours (7pm Vancouver time) during an Autodesk hosted webinar titled "How to manage a globally-dispersed virtual team":
https://gems.autodesk.com/c/express/d7e671ef-3af0-4c78-b22a-a585602af5d5

I will be talking a lot about Cyan Eyed, and mentioning the use of Corona and a little on how I used it during this discussion. So if you want to be one of the first to see the trailer for Cyan Eyed with a lot of Corona rendered CG eye candy, be sure to click on that link to see it and hear me talk live!

23

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona Bump Converter - Theory?

« on: 2020-06-25, 05:02:11 »

It essentially converts the input colour to the native Max bump delta. If you are doing anything more complicated that using the Output node to affect the scale of the bump, you need the bump converter, otherwise your input maps will have no effect in the bump slot. The bump converter will slow down the render just a tiny bit because it is performing a shader evaluation, but there is really no other way to get around it, so it is necessary.

The issue is with Max itself, not Corona, for treating the bump data differently to every other slot.

24

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: Njen's 'Cyan Eyed' work in progress thread (animated short film)

« on: 2020-06-23, 18:28:52 »

Just a few more weeks to go until the release of the trailer of Cyan Eyed, the action packed, steampunk themed animated short film. For the first time, instead of just stills, video is also being released which shows off one of the exclusive trailer only shots.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XnB9Ll
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6681226855854460928/
https://twitter.com/NezuiFilms/status/1275465102775353344

25

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Motion blur for VolumeGrids calculated incorrectly...

« on: 2020-06-09, 22:30:07 »

I realised I produced these two renders with with Motion blur turned off, which actually now makes sense for a sim produced in world space. So as far as my original issue goes, please set that as user error.

However, before I realised that was user error, I simmed the smoke at the origin in local space with no movement, then linked the volume grid to the geo, so that it moves along with it, and when I did a test render, I got exactly the same results as it it was simmed in world space with no links.

I would actually expect a volume grid that is being translated somehow (linked, animated, etc.) to still have correct transformation blur, even if the motion blur setting on the volume grid option is turned off. But it seems that when motion blur is turned off on the volume object, it kills all forms of movement. If you are chalking this up to 'as designed', then my recommendation for a feature request would be to add an option (a checkbox?) to allow object transformation blur, even if the velocity blur is turned off.

26

[Max] Bug Reporting / Motion blur for VolumeGrids calculated incorrectly...

« on: 2020-06-08, 23:17:26 »

I have a scene that has moving geo, and I have animated the camera to move along with it, so the relative motion blur is almost non-existent, which is correct.

I have a vdb smoke sim that is simmed in world space, so the vdb grid is not linked to anything, and also tracks with the objects and camera. But when I render, the vdb appears to have motion blur that is not relative to the camera (first attached image).

To confirm this, I deleted all keys on the camera, and did another render. Now all of the geo is blurred because the camera isn't moving any more (which is correct), but the vdb has no motion blur, but it should, as it is moving through world space at the same speed as the geo (incorrect), which is basically the opposite of the previous image (second attached image).

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Work in Progress/Tests / Re: Njen's 'Cyan Eyed' work in progress thread (animated short film)

« on: 2020-06-08, 22:58:22 »

The trailer for Cyan Eyed will be released soon, and it will include five exclusive new shots that are not in the film! Watch this space for more details. In the meantime, here is a teaser from the trailer!

@arqrenderz: Haha, just a couple of Threadripper 2's and some extra help from GarageFarm.NET for online rendering.

28

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Random 'buckets' missing when using caustics...

« on: 2020-06-08, 20:05:48 »

Now I'm being greedy: if there is a fix for this that will be available sometime in the next month or two, any chance for a hotfix for v5? I am about 85% done on my animated short film, and would rather not want to upgrade major versions of the renderer just in case anything looks different.

29

[Max] Bug Reporting / Re: Random 'buckets' missing when using caustics...

« on: 2020-06-08, 18:04:47 »

Thanks for letting me know. I have also attached the caustic pass AOV frame sequence for the example shot I posted above as a video file, in case you were wondering what this looks like in motion.

Thanks!

30

[Max] Bug Reporting / Random 'buckets' missing when using caustics...

« on: 2020-06-08, 08:56:33 »

I have set up a caustics pass render for just the eyes of a character. Everything in the setup works fine except for what I can only describe as random buckets that go missing every time I render the image even though nothing changes. As in, I hit render, and one bucket will be missing. Then I hit render again, and another bucket will be missing.

A description of the attached images:

• 1_viewport.png - The geo that is included in the render.
• 2_beautyPass.png - The beauty pass. No caustics are enabled in the beauty pass, just the caustic pass. This image is included just for reference.
• 3_causticAOV.png - The caustic pass. In the top right corner a 'bucket' seems to be missing.
• 4_causticAOVExpose.png - The caustic pass exposed up. Checking to see if any data does actually exist in the missing 'bucket'.
• 5_causticAOVRerender.png - Nothing in the scene was altered in any way. Rendered the image again after the previous one finished, and a different 'bucket' is now missing information in the lower right area.