Rendering animated videos
rampart_1576840087
Posts: 504
Created a 15 second animated video.avi
A busy scene with long transitions between key frames for smooth viewing.
It took 20 minutes to do two frames of 380.
There is no way this will work.
Does anyone know of tutorials or links to information on rendering more efficiently.
Possibly a different render application might be the answer.
At this point I am thinking to do minimum number of rendered frames and use transitional tools in Sony Vegas.
The transitions will not look like the Carrara video of course, but they will be significantly more efficient.
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Comments
probably your settings
do not use global illumination
object and shadow accuracy only need be 4 for a 1920 x 1080 video
and use image series not avi
post an image and we can get a better idea what is slowing it down
Didn't we just have a thread about this a few days ago? Or maybe my rememberer is broken again... :) ;)
Anyway, its a big subject and depends a lot on what you're rendering. You said 20 minutes for two frames, which is 10 minutes a frame? That's a lot.
There are many ways to fix that, but again it depends on what you're doing, so we can only guess.
What many people do is composite their animations, so you're not always rendering a complete scene if you don't need to. For example, if you have a big background that takes forever to render (lots of leaves or vegitation for example), maybe you can render that only once and use that image as a background, and just re-render the moving parts.
Or you can look at other lighting alternatives instead of global illumination. That's a very commonly used practice by professionals who can't afford to spend 8 years rendering a 2 hour feature... :) :)
Anyway, if you can be more specific on what's taking so much time to render maybe we can help.
you could add 50 more computers (network)
or composite as I am doing, too..
you can reduce the framerate to 6; sometimes OK for motion shots too IMHO...
Octane for Carrara can render very fast. Even on my little 2GB Nvidia laptop it is pretty fast, and for those with more robust systems in can really fly. Might be a solution.
Another is simply the render settings. It makes much more sense to use high quality settings on still renders than it does on animations, as the movement makes the picture come alive and we are less prone to notice the subtle differences between full global illumination as opposed to an ambient lighting setting paired only with direct lighting.
Outside of settings, a second or third computer would help renders go faster. Carrara has a function which allows you set two or more computers to work together. It is actually quite easy. If the computers are roughly the same specs, then a second one will cut render times in half, a third by 60%, a fourth by 75% (roughly). Some computers are better at handling heat and heavy loads, but you get the picture. This functionality is already in Carrara and is pretty easy to set up.
All good information.. the render settings are extensive. It is difficult to know just what to do.
Trial and error testing is always such a slow process, and often frustrating.
Is there a way to make the display page the same size as your render page?
This should help for preparing and economizing in scenes.
Is there a utility that will provide information on poly counts by content items individually and combined?
I have noticed there seems to be more emphasis with Carrara to use 2d backgrounds, in lieu of 3d backgrounds.
This is not a bad thing of course. Just have to adjust to creating them.
The problem of my render was not background, because I left it all black and chose sunlight.
I plan to carefully read the responses in this thread as I am sure there is helpful information.
distant light or a bulb will render much quicker than sunlight and not using realistic sky
a light dome is a good idea too sometimes for a daylight effect though not as quick as a single bulb
http://www.sharecg.com/v/30481/favorite/5/3D-Model/Light-Dome-presets-for-Carrara-6
If you could provide a screen capture of your render settings so that we may be able to point you in the right direction.
Wendy is correct that a 2D image in the scene's Background or Backdrop will render faster than a realistic sky, but in my experience, not that much faster- depending on haze and other effects. The sunlight and moonlight are essentially distant lights, so it's not them that increase render times when used with a sky, it is the atmospheric effects from the sky.
I think Carrara has no more emphasis to use 2D backgrounds than any other program- in fact that's why I liked Carrara over Studio and Poser, I felt that those two programs precluded the use of massive environments, and Carrara's strength was the ability to produce massive environments like Bryce, but with more flexibility. I still think this. The thing is, that everything you stick in a scene has a cost in resources. I think Carrara handles those resources pretty well, but if you have a forest of trees, even if they're replicated, those leaves cast shadows, they need to be rendered, if an atmosphere is used, the further away they are from the camera, the more the atmosphere effects the look. etc.
Everything that is suggested to decrease render times is not Carrara specific, they are general principles that can be applied across all programs. Look at some of the special features on Blu-ray and DVDs for, Making Of, type videos for CG movies like Pixar films or live action movies that rely heavily on CG effects and you will see some of the shortcuts they use.
I remember reading about The Empire Strikes Back and the asteroid field scene. To get the size and scope of the asteroid field took something like 250 passes (could be remembering the number wrong) in an optical printer, with each asteroid photographed on its own piece of film and composited with the optical printer. Today it can be much simpler.
Today, in Carrara, you would build a few CG asteroids, maybe set up a rotation parameter so they each rotate a bit differently, then stick them in a replicator. If they are in the distance, then they wouldn't need to be that detailed. You may want a dust cloud in the background as well to suggest the asteroid field stretches in the distance. If there were a spaceship flying through the field, weaving in and out amongst them, then you would want some "hero" asteroids that are not in a replicator and which you would have more control over.
All told you could have several hundred objects of various degrees of complexity. If rendered in one shot, Carrara would have to keep track of all that geometry and its motion and position. Then it would have to raytrace from all those points. probably with multiple lights.... If you rendered each element separately, such as the dust cloud, the background asteroid field, the hero asteroids and spaceship, the combined render time could be shorter than a single render where you try and get everything in one shot.
Some shots will just take awhile no matter what, such as a huge, detailed terrain with a forest on it. Carrara could do it in one pass, but again, how long it takes to render it will depend on the detail, the lighting, and the render settings. You could render the scene with a large terrain without the forest, then you could apply a shadow catcher to the terrain, put your forest on the terrain, render a movie with alpha and composite the two in a video editor. You can even render a terrain and atmosphere with the alpha to get rid of the "sky" but still have the distance haze and such.
You can cheat a lot with animations, details are not so important as they are with a still image, turn of everything or set it as low as possible so it renders crappy junk, then turn on features until you get something you can use.
Don't turn on things that does not give anything extra, if you don't get any improvements from all the GI features, just turn them of.
Motion blur and some antialiasing are good to have though, that also helps to hide lower quality rendering.
And if you can get just one other computer you will cut the rending time in half or you can render on that and model on the other so anything helps.
Do short animation sequences to test with, if you turn some feature on and it does not add anything to the animation then leave it disabled.
Hide everything that is not visible from the camera view unless it cast shadows or have some other impact on the rendering, when the camera moves and things are no longer visible, just hide them, it will do a lot for render times also some times.
Look where it is slow, usually it is local in some part of the image, look for reflections, transparent materials with refraction, monster size meshes, things like that.
Cheat, cheat and cheat!!! you can never cheat enough with animations, if the camera don't move, backdrops are fine and can do miracles for render times, people watching the animation will only see the animation, they don't know if you cheat or not, only the final result is important.
And once again, if it does not add anything to the animation, disable it.
I guess this w.i.p. clip could be put in here: http://youtu.be/8XGdNkx5DZ4
some specs: 3600x1600 px, average render time: 4 min/frame, mini farm of 24 cores, no crash, the rendernode works like a charm :-)
mixamo animation on the left, gofigure on the right, slight adjustments in post
Just released the "final" white version in HD of part 1 of my crappy princess movie here
http://vimeo.com/118948455
If you are looking for render stats, here are mine:
If I had to dump every file in the render q, with 20 cores, doing PSD and avi mix would take about 30 hours.
But this is just foreground images so is only about 1/2 the work...
By the time I remixed in "brown" skin shaders, rebuilt and added audio, mastering, effects, etc overall timeframe was...
4 MONTHS
3-4 days a week, similar to working for HP or IBM; coding full time, focused.
Now working better; pipeline better but this is just to give you an idea of overall project timeframe. I guess what I am saying is sure the rendering speed is very important but there are tons of elements, this is just one part of the puzzle.
I see you are having fun! keep postig!