FlyThrough Quality Dilemma

[Dwight]

Have I gone and done it now.
Snookered.
My assignment is a 2 minute flythrough of a condo for DVD presentation. Naturally I want to do 720x486 at 30fps.

But the model is so complex - bamboo and cutlery and other nice things like slumpy mesh cushions and finely modeled faucets that rendering some frames is going to take ten minutes.

This is a gently moving cinematic treatment with trucking and panning

What compromise damages the project the least?

1: reduce to 15 fps
2: reduce pixels by 1/2 and enlarge in Photoshop
3: both
4: other alternative???

[Anonymous]

I would NEVER do a 2 minute long flythrough.
If you use about half that time on still images, with very high settings, you can do the other minute in 5 or 6 ten sec long clips.
As a bonus, you find out sooner if there is some rendering problem (textures, lights, whatnot).
And as a superbonus, you can render only parts of your model for each scene (exteriors without furniture, interiors without those pesky trees and cars).
If you do this rightly, you will achieve a flythrough feeling, without doing a flythrough.
Btw, wasn't it you that wrote somewhere (book?) that one should NEVER do a flyghtrough?
Don't give the client what they want, give em what they need, I always say.

[Dwight]

In Canada we have a phrase:

"You can't teach your Grandmother how to s*ck eggs." ["*"equals "u"]

The kind of flythrough I'm referring to is a carefully planned cinematic effort with slow pans and graceful dolly shots. [don't think what you are thinking.] Not the camera-moving-forward-first-person-shoot-em-up stuff. And lots of crossfades to get us through the narrow places - it is a cramped condo and I have cheated the furniture down. To see the unit properly needs carefully planned pans and lateral trucking, not wide angle shots. So I hope that I meet your criterion for a successful strategy.

But what remains: tactics, is a need to output a massive number of frames... and a time problem. So please help me out by addressing my technical question instead of giving obvious advice - advice found in some guy's book already:

In making an animation for which there isn't time for absolute quality, what are acceptable image quality compromises?

PS: Have already discovered 3/4 reduction in anti-aliasing and render quality radio buttons hardly noticeable in an animation.... and saves 2/3 time.

So what is it? Size or speed?

[stefan]

Dwight wrote:
Have I gone and done it now.
Snookered.
My assignment is a 2 minute flythrough of a condo for DVD presentation. Naturally I want to do 720x486 at 30fps.

But the model is so complex - bamboo and cutlery and other nice things like slumpy mesh cushions and finely modeled faucets that rendering some frames is going to take ten minutes.

This is a gently moving cinematic treatment with trucking and panning

What compromise damages the project the least?

1: reduce to 15 fps
2: reduce pixels by 1/2 and enlarge in Photoshop
3: both
4: other alternative???

Do not put in there what you do not need 😉

I'd say, firstly reduce fps so you cut your rendering time in half and still keep the visible detail in the image.

Enlarge in Photoshop is possible. Expect a more blurred result then the original. My video software can stretch it automatically, so I can put smaller video's on the timeline and then the software takes care of rendering it out to a suitable DVD-format. That said, on my slow PC, the video-rendering can take a while...

You can reduce pixels to a lesser extent (e.g. 66%) and still keep some detail.

Reduce polygon count and try to fix it in the texture maps.

Renderfarm?

[Anonymous]

Aaaaaaaaaaarrrg. I feel your pain!

Regardless of the amount of lights, polygons, etc. Animations require a true poly muncher. I know it is a pain to translate, apply materials, light, etc., but the set-up time is worth it when it comes time to animate or render. ArchiCAD is not well suited to this type of work. This scene probably will render in about 3 min. in C4D (the average for a heavy scene and no radiosity in C4D)

Remember the C4D building scene that Michael Rensing built? It took 15 min. to render (radiosity) on my Dell precision 340. The same file averaged 15 SECONDS a frame on the Render King Render Farm. The couple of hundred spend on access to the farm made the difference between a two day rendering project or a three month rendering sequence. Animation requires distributed rendering. Wire frames and sample images happen at the desktop.

I don't say this so much for Dwight's benefit, we have conversed plenty. I post it here to warn others who might plan to produce such an effort.

[Aussie John]

I think 20fps will look smooth enough and 2 minutes is a longish time- You could reduce that. Of course, Since Canadians dont suck eggs you would know not to make the fly through too fast.

If you do you flyaround in Archicad then you could script to reduce the polygons/resolution of the syrupy objects on a distance from the camera basis. Trouble is I dont think that will work when you export to a third party renderer.

Breaking up the flythrough into a multiple number will help if you need to redo any bits.

The Ken Burns type effect of panning across stills, combined cross fading can look good and give the feeling of motion.

Where are those 12 TeraFlops when you need 'em

EDIT: Fancy the word S*U*C*K gets sensored. Some people must be sensitive.

[Rob]

Dwight,

could you please share some of your discoveries in this particular area? I have noticed in the different thread that you had finished your renderings which BTW look very impressive.

[Dwight]

Kid: tweak city... Some of these were rendered thrity times - that is how you learn. Overandoveragain.

This particular exercise came to the studio at an opportune time - I needed to have a challenge in LightWorks, altho I am regretting doing the animation in ArchiCAD.

Mark Burginger says that Cinema 4D is way faster and more fluid than LightWorks. He is right, of course, but that set-up lacks editing ease and element switching, especially with an indecisive client like mine. Lacking vision, once a scheme is modeled and rendered, there's always a change.

Right now, placing cameras is the problem. Usually one sees a flythru in a reasonably open space, but the confines of this apartment make it hard to keep the path tight and smooth at the same time. I've opted for a series of pans and trucks that cross-fade through openings. Allowing ArchiCAD's linear accelerating cameras the minimum

Animation tip: render three paths for every one: a start path - the first two cameras with double the usual frames, and likewise the last two cameras. Join the stills together in one clip and drop intermediate images to simulate acceleration. Wasteful but ncessary. Any advice on this - I am also crossfading in motion to keep up the pace.

[Anonymous]

I avoid ArchiCAD on the rendering issue altogether.
Using Art*Lantis (even with its shader problems) is much more effective.´
For one, you can accelerate and decelerate the camera path, which I find FUNDAMENTAL in pans and travellings.
If you have to change your matrix at the clients whim, you can always "open with reference", no problem there.
Trick: when doing a camera movement, always produce a high res still rendering of the first and last image. This way, you can join them at the beginning and end of you clip, when you are editing the whole thing, and that way you have total control over the length of each scene, which comes very handy if you want to sincronize music and images. And it gives you a more "real" feeling, because that is the way people shoot scenes.
Trick: Do NOT use Ken Burns. When you turn your head (or your camera) your eyes (or the lens) don't remain in the same place. Being your neck or the tripod the axis of your rotation, and not the eyes/lens, you get a "depth" feeling that is not attainable when you pan across a still image. Foreground and background elements remain aligned with the camera, so you get a "flat" feeling, which gives your movie a amateurish stamp. When doing a rotation of my camera on Art.lantis, I always displace the first and last camera. And usual I also rise the last one a bit. It gives you an uplifting feeling, which is quite nice (avoid downmoving cameras, as they tend to give you a depressing feeling.

Dwight: I'm glad you changed your entry, because, as you might have guessed, and me not knowing any canadian saying, I thought the censored word was the f word, so it was quite a shock

[Dwight]

While one might occasionally speak or shout it, one NEVER writes it.

One's mother could be reading.

You are right - Artlantis is better and will soon be far superior to the LightWorks solution. Why we work with LightWorks as would most ArchiCAD users is to cope with changes. My recent assignment, grief-filled due to my foolishly ignoring several good business practices and the avaricious expectation of "easy coin," only progressed at all because I could quickly show reasonable renderings of interior design options to a client lacking vision.

But now I'm in a situation where it takes 7 minutes a frame for about 900 frames of an animation. At least I don't have to watch.