Author Topic: General guidelines to rendering an animation  (Read 2514 times)

2020-01-24, 23:04:47

John.McWaters

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I've rendered only single frame shots, but now I would like to begin rendering animations from Corona.

All I know so far is that the UHD Cache should be set to 'Animation' and you need to set the frames you'd like to render in the 'Common' tab. I'm curious on common strategies in regard to render passes and noise levels. Is one limit (noise level, render passes, render time) used more often than others for animations? What noise levels are generally acceptable for videos?

I'm also in the dark in terms of best formats to output. From my understanding, jpeg is okay for lower quality videos, but what formats are best for high quality videos?

If I want to edit the look of the video, is that best done in the VFB as it saves frames or in software such as After Effects once it's been composed into a video?

I know I'm throwing a lot out there, but I really appreciate any input!

2020-01-25, 03:02:00
Reply #1

Njen

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If you are using multiple computers to render an animation, the only reliable method for consistency of quality is to use noise level as your render quality metric. Different computers have different specs and will render the same scene in different times and passes, so Noise Level is the only way to go.

You can generally get away with more noise when rendering an animation. I hover around 6% - 8% with Corona's noise reduction set to the default values. I then do another light pass at reducing a little more noise in comp.

You should never render to jpg format, even for still images. Jpg is a lossy format, and you can never get back any detail you might have lossed due to compression. My preferred format is exr, but that is because I work in VFX. But even if you do not work in VFX, exr is the superior image file format in my opinion.

Comping is always best done in a dedicated program. I prefer Nuke, but AE can stand in well enough.

2020-01-25, 03:13:37
Reply #2

Njen

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Oh, and make sure 'Lock Sampling Pattern' is turned off.

2020-01-25, 17:14:27
Reply #3

John.McWaters

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Thank you for your detailed response!

When your say "I hover around 6% - 8% with Corona's noise reduction set to the default values." are you referring to using Corona's denoising solution with the default value (I think it's something like .65)?

Do you normally limit your frame renders by nose amount?

2020-01-25, 20:38:04
Reply #4

sebastian___

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jpg is lossy, but if you are rendering temp animations it should be fine. The size can be very small and convenient for fast managing, while having a reasonable quality. PNG is lossless and can also have small sizes but it's more taxing on the CPU.