Author Topic: Optimizing a complex venue for animation on render farm...  (Read 2419 times)

2022-01-04, 23:02:36

johnnyswedish

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Hi Forum & Happy New Year All!

I have a venue which was only meant to be rendered as stills and it is very detailed. Now the client wants a animation done. It is dark with lots of lights. Is there a good way to set up Corona to render faster but with less detail to get the times per frames down? Is it best to reduce polys on all objects? They don't have a big budget for the project and I don't have a lot of experience rendering out a complex fly-through. Any advice would be such a help :-) Thank John

2022-01-09, 23:30:45
Reply #1

BigAl3D

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I'm sure you'll get many people saying there could be lots of things to optimize, but would need to see something. At least some type of render if possible. What type of animation? Length? Output size (HD, 2k, 4k)? Rendering any fog effects? Lots of glass or reflective materials? I mean the list goes on and on.

2022-01-11, 10:08:29
Reply #2

johnnyswedish

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Hi BigAl3D,

Sure, you do have a point. I have attached a couple of renders. Basically there will be two animations, one going into the venue and one panning down from the top to bottom. Both are 10secs long at 60fps only at 1280x720 as each frame currently are round 10-16min per frame. As you can see it has loads of lights, could this be a culprit? Would it help to reduce polys on objects? I will try sampling balance today. Hope this is more useful and thanks for the reply :-) John

2022-01-11, 14:42:30
Reply #3

jojorender

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Hi John,
what’s your reason for 60fps? 24fps is the more “cinematic” frame rate and you only need to render 240 frames instead of 600 per clip.
If your animation is relatively slow, meaning things don’t change too much from one frame to the next you can render even less frames and “slow down” the animation in AE.
Let’s say you have a simple 2 keyframe animation. and use 24fps, you have one cam keyframe at 0 and the last at 239. Move that last keyframe to 120 and your animation runs twice as fast.
I use a AE plugin called Twixtor to slow down the animation back to the original 240 frames.
Twixtor is really good in creating these in-between frames. This alone will cut your render time in half.
You might be able to use AE built-in slow-mo tools (not sure, I’m still on CS6).
Because of re-timing, I would do motion blur (RSMB) in AE instead of baking into frame.
I don’t think reducing polys will help much, if at all. Not sure if squeezing sampling balance will introduce flicker.
I think 10-16min. including bloom/glare is already pretty good. Is that on single machine or farm? Maybe render a half or quarter res test before sending to farm.
Good luck!

2022-01-11, 17:16:08
Reply #4

johnnyswedish

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Hi jojorender!

Thank you for your very useful input on this. I did the first part 60fps for smoothness. I looked at Twixtor, a bit too pricey for me but nice plugin. I will however go down your route and slow it down. 30fps will give me enough scope, thanks again, and you are right, I'm not going to fiddle with the render settings in case I get flickering :-)

2022-01-12, 08:45:14
Reply #5

balatschaka

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AI Frame Interpolation like DAIN nowdays is better than Twixtor. But both would give you bad results anyway because of the repeating patterns in the metal sheets.

Here is a nice guide to optimization of your scene:
https://cgelves.com/optimizing-scenes-in-3ds-max-geometry-reducing-the-polycount-for-faster-rendering/?v=3a52f3c22ed6&nowprocket=1
(The link seems kinda broken for some reason. Works in Internet Explorer tho...)

2022-01-12, 10:58:43
Reply #6

johnnyswedish

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Hi balatschaka,

Thank you so much for this link (works ok in Chrome win10 BTW). VERY good read. Never intended for this to be animated. Will put my glasses on n have a read this evening. :-)

2022-01-12, 11:12:53
Reply #7

balatschaka

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2022-01-12, 18:59:38
Reply #8

BigAl3D

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Looks to be a nice animation. Nothing screams at me as far as long render times. 10 min. per frame for a complex scene isn't crazy really. Home/office renders anyway. Don't know what CPU you're using so that render time might be decent. Unless you get super close to the glasses at the bar, you could get away with no refraction if there is any. That's extra processing. Also any caustics will add lots of time.

Would love to see the final once you get it all sorted. Good luck!

2022-01-12, 20:09:59
Reply #9

johnnyswedish

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Hi BigAl3D,

Thansk :-) I'm sending it to Ranchcomputing in a bit and I'll post the final version here when it's done. Have a good eve, John.

2022-01-13, 20:56:42
Reply #10

johnnyswedish

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balatschaka, I want to marry you! OMG!!! Flowframes is INSANE, no more rendering at 60fps. I am truly speechless. Thank you :-) The final render was so stuttery it hurt, now smooth as... wish they had a bit more money to throw at it but hey. BTW, does anyone have any comment on render costs? The inside cost 147€ and outside 97€. 1280x720px, 12passes, 300 frames. Love to hear your feedback :-)

2022-01-13, 21:06:11
Reply #11

johnnyswedish

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BigAl3D forgot! A lot of glass had refraction so ticked 'Thin (no refraction)' and this bought the render times way down so thank you :-)

2022-01-14, 22:24:58
Reply #12

johnnyswedish

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Hi All,

Here is the final promo video...

2022-01-14, 23:46:36
Reply #13

BigAl3D

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