Chaos Corona Forum

General Category => Gallery => Topic started by: alexyork on 2016-04-04, 12:33:39

Title: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-04, 12:33:39
Hi folks,

Putting adaptivity and denoising to the test, this was rendered entirely using one of the recent daily builds and the render time savings were simply massive. Typically, before these tools, we were looking at around 250-300 passes per frame and approx. 30 mins per frame on our workstations. With A&D enabled this dropped to 50-85 passes per frame and 7-11mins per frame. Massive time-saving and no issues with flickering/weirdness/loss of detail.

For us the main thing that could be improved here would be a simple include/exclude option so we can enable/disable denoising where needed in a shot.

If anyone has any questions about our workflow let us know. Hope you enjoy ;) (Video best viewed with sound up!).


(http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5693b89d1c1210fdda40465b/56fbcb2eb6aa60437e3aaa08/57308b2da3360c68b3e3b136/1462799154687/recent_spaces_primrose_hill_01.jpg?format=2500w)

(http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5693b89d1c1210fdda40465b/56fbcb2eb6aa60437e3aaa08/56fbeafd555986bb90af9922/1459350274723/recent_spaces_primrose_hill_06.jpg?format=2500w)

(http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5693b89d1c1210fdda40465b/56fbcb2eb6aa60437e3aaa08/56fbeafc555986bb90af98f4/1459350271618/recent_spaces_primrose_hill_04.jpg?format=2500w)

(http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5693b89d1c1210fdda40465b/56fbcb2eb6aa60437e3aaa08/56fbeafc2fe1316a97d03abf/1459350273021/recent_spaces_primrose_hill_05.jpg?format=2500w)

(http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5693b89d1c1210fdda40465b/56fbcb2eb6aa60437e3aaa08/56fbeafc2fe1316a97d03abc/1459350272036/recent_spaces_primrose_hill_03.jpg?format=2500w)

(http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5693b89d1c1210fdda40465b/56fbcb2eb6aa60437e3aaa08/56fbeafa2fe1316a97d03ab1/1459350269784/recent_spaces_primrose_hill_02.jpg?format=2500w)

http://www.recentspaces.com/work#/primrose-hill/  to see them larger.

Cheers,
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: johan belmans on 2016-04-04, 12:43:29
well done!
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: Rhodesy on 2016-04-04, 13:14:06
Wow thats really beautiful and really clean! Those times are pretty darn quick even on a dual xeon. Im really struggling on an internal animation at the moment - sadly only on the C4D version so no adaption. Im still quite noisy at 30mins on my workstation at 720p. Any tips for optimizing internal animations? Im using portals which has made a difference but its still quite slow. Im also getting noise in direct light from the spot lights which I find odd and changing the AA/GI balance doesnt seem to help much just makes it longer to render each pass so it looks cleaner but takes longer. I am using some IES lights and sunlight/env is HDRI, I don't know if thats slowing me down. The external shots are pretty quick and need much fewer passes. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cant wait for denoising! Thanks. 
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: iainbanks on 2016-04-04, 13:24:06
Thanks Guys, much appreciated.

Rhodesy - Pretty quick indeed, for the animation we stripped out everything that was unnecessary for the shots to speed things up.  Portals are great to help clear up noise.  I'm not familiar with what version of C4D is on but if its an older version of Corona then i know it wasn't the best at clearing up noise from IES lights. Best to just let it render in this case.

We generally use Corona sun and sky for these types of interiors so maybe try switching out your HDRi for the corona sky and see if that improves it a bit.

Also do a Albedo element pass to check that all your materials are behaving correctly and don't have any extreme whites or blacks.

Hope that helps

Iain
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: Rhodesy on 2016-04-04, 13:44:41
Thanks so much for your help Iain, im a big admirer of your work (who isn't!). Yes checked the albedo and all is above board but I might try stripping out the IES for this to see if they are the culprit. I have quite a few lights in the scene to highlight certain areas and also thought that maybe having more light in the scene would help clear up the GI. But perhaps its working against me. Going to take some env switching gymnastics as the outside lighting works really well with the HRDRI. I will try and strip everything back though. Sadly myself and the architect are at odds with the client on camera paths, with them favouring the literal tour of the building which leaves less room to hide unresolved stuff.

The C4D version has the 1.4 core but still missing some key features.

Thanks again, Rob
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: bluebox on 2016-04-04, 13:55:39
Great stuff guys, I'm a big fan of your works, keep posting !
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-04, 16:52:09
Thanks guys. Appreciate the kind words.
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: Abderrahmen Ezzine on 2016-04-04, 20:11:01
Realy nice Work well done !! my questions are
What's your work flow softs and what are the specs of ur work station so i can compare and have a predictible time ?
Thanks alot
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-04, 20:17:02
Realy nice Work well done !! my questions are
What's your work flow softs and what are the specs of ur work station so i can compare and have a predictible time ?
Thanks alot

Thank you. Nothing unusual at all - just standard max 2016 with corona daily build, post in AE, running on dual xeon E5-2670v3 workstations (12 core at something like 2.3 or 2.6 not sure).

I would run the corona 1.3 benchmark and then compare against our entries (look for Recent Spaces on page 2 I think). That should give you a fair idea for comparison.
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: JonG on 2016-04-04, 21:05:25
Nice set of images and video!

One thing distracts me though... The tiling on the ceiling in the first image.
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: guest_guest on 2016-04-04, 23:06:35
@alexyork

what's your Adaptivity / denoiser settings??
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-05, 09:03:17
@alexyork

what's your Adaptivity / denoiser settings??

JonG - hah, fair point. Thanks for mentioning!

Guest - Adaptivity is default, Denoiser is set to 0.6 rather than 1.0. Personally I think the default should be 0.6. It seems to be a sweet-spot for best results without causing artifacts.
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: Ludvik Koutny on 2016-04-05, 10:51:36
Don't you miss those good old mental ray days? ;D
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: erkuttaner on 2016-04-05, 11:47:13
Impressive work.Could you show us a frame of animation with and without adaptivity/denoiser at same amount of passes?
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-05, 14:00:18
Don't you miss those good old mental ray days? ;D

At the time I loved MR. Gave talks on it, even. But no, I don't miss it :)

Erkuttaner - many thanks. I don't think we have any frames saved out with no denoising for this project but keep an eye out for an article soon with comparison images just like this.
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: spadestick on 2016-04-05, 14:06:38
super super sweet
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: Specto3d on 2016-04-19, 15:09:33
That's a really nice animation in such short rendertime per frame. I'm trying to get something similar, not in HD resolution but in 1024/600, and can't get under 10 minutes.
Is there any other thing to do to optimize scene for animation except those mentioned previously in post: portals, Corona Sun&Sky, Single polygon plane with thin enabled for glass, denoiser @0,6 and adaptivity?

Thanks
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: MGDesignUK on 2016-04-20, 09:52:13
Would you mind sharing the raw render before post work? Loving your website and work by the way - keep it up :)
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-20, 11:06:54
Thanks all!

MG - there's almost no post at all on either stills or animation. In the animation we added some very subtle vignetting, a little bloom and the dust motes. But visually they look basically identical to the raw renders. That's our workflow for all projects.

Specto - yes that list is more or less all you can do, and all we do.

We are going to post an article imminently covering some of these tools. Will post here when it's ready ;) (later today hopefully!).

Cheers,
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-20, 12:29:08
Here we go, denoising comparison and basic setup guide. Hope you guys find it useful!

http://www.recentspaces.com/blog/2016/4/13/corona-denoising-comparisons
http://www.recentspaces.com/blog/
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: MGDesignUK on 2016-04-20, 13:09:06
Fab wright up - thank you
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-20, 13:11:12
No problem at all.
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: dartofang on 2016-04-23, 11:42:23
congrats on your team!! nice and clean renders :)
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-25, 21:39:23
congrats on your team!! nice and clean renders :)

Thanks!
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: douglasalves.cg on 2016-04-26, 15:31:15
WOW, you did a impressive work here, congratulations!!
I'm so curious about the DOF, it was done in render or post production?
keep rocking guys!
Title: Re: Primrose Hill - Animation & Stills
Post by: alexyork on 2016-04-26, 16:11:38
WOW, you did a impressive work here, congratulations!!
I'm so curious about the DOF, it was done in render or post production?
keep rocking guys!

Thank you. DOF was all in post, using Lenscare with zdepth pass.

Cheers,