Massive Render - Need some tricks from the pros
pnewhook
Posts: 70
Hey,
So I'm doing a massive (really massive) render job for someone and I've run into some limitations that I thought some of the more 'been around the block experts' would be able to shed some light on.
I'm rendering a 22 second VR360 movie at 8192x4096 resolution and 30fps. I'd say my machine is pretty new and mid-top of the line so very quick usually (16 render nodes?). At that resolution and with my scene complexity one frame takes about 3 minutes to render.
Question 1:
There seems to be a 2GB limit on rendered movies. Is there any way to get Carrara to auto segment a movie into smaller chunks? The only way I've seen to do this is to do batch rendering (which brings me to question #2). In the past I've just rendered into 15s chunks for 1080p movies and i've only needed 2 or three chunks so I've done the chunking manually. In this case I can only do 1/2 second movie chunks so doing that 40 times is not practical.
Question 2:
Because I didn't figure out a nice way for 2, I've loaded up the 1/2 second chunks into the batch queue. But I didnt see a way to specify the currently loaded car file, only one from a file. Normally that would be ok but it takes 20 minutes to load my CAR file. That with the 90 minutes to render a 1/2 second movie chunk seems to be a lot of wasted overhead - for 40 chunck thats over 13 hours of wasted time to load a file that is already loaded. Anyway to avoid this load penalty? Making the CAR smaller is not an option.
Question 3:
Sun glow and lens flare does not seem to work properly for spherical cameras. It seems only to be applies in the +/-90 in front of the camera, not behind even though the camera is a 360 degree camera. Anyone know how to fix or fake this?
Thanks in advance for any sugestions!
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Comments
33 hours for 22 seconds with this quality, it's not so terrific.
I use to have also very long renders in 720P/25, this is normal for me (my computer is not very new).
About the limitation of 2Go, I know that there is a patch on the web to break this limitation but I don't know if that work with Carrara.
I can load a 3-4 Go scene in all the cases.
Most of my 1920x1080 scenes render in 1-2 seconds per frame or less depending on content. Its just the combination of polygons (a few hundred million) textures (several gig) and lights in that scene which is dragging it down.
My system does not have a 2GB file limitation - its a Carrara limitation (and I'm running 64 bit 8.5 Pro). Outside of Carrara I can combine the individual chunks into one massive file with no problem.
Question 2: Batch Queue only loads saved files. Even if you save the current scene and load that into the queue, it will always load the scene fresh every time. For that reason, to save on resources I close the open scene before launching the queue to render.
The best way I can suggest getting it all done in one round is something that all professional rneder artists are constantly try to get me to do, and that is to render to image sequence instead of movie file. It will render the entre thing in one shot - even if you're using an open scene - and can also allow us to pick up where we left off if we had to stop it for any reason.
Question 3: the only way to experience lens flare is to look at the emitted light. So this is the way it should be - we should never see the flare when we're not looking at the light. But I warn you this: Lens flares baked into shots like this always look like crap - like fake flares. For interactivity, you'll need to produce the flare through the viewing engine, like they do in games. All too many times I see baked-in flares that disappear behind something in a scene. Flares are always in the forefront of everything because they are an optical effect. Fake this at your own risk!
But if you really need to have lens flares all aroung the spherical scene, make sure to have enugh lights all the way around the perimeter of the scene which each create a flare.
If you're rendering to a MOVIE file,. stop that now,.
Render to a set of images,. (image sequence) AKA (Frames of film)
this allows you to load a sequence, into an editor,. just as you would load a single movie clip
The "Problem" with saving as a "movie file" is that the program needs to open the clip (in memory), add the latest rendered frame to it,. then save the clip. so the bigger you "movie clip" the more memory needed to open, add, save, each frame
Image sequence, saves each image with a numerical ending,. mypic0001, mypic0002 etc..
Video editors and compositing programs are built to work with image sequences,. whether it's from digital sources or film camera's.
As Dart mentioned,. lens flare effects should only occur when the lens of the camera is facing the light direction,.
but sometimes for other things,. like star/planet effects,. you wan to have complete control over when and how that effect happens.
for lens flares,. in post production,. "Optical Flares", from Videocopilot.net,. if you're using After Effects, the Optical Flares plugin gives you a bunch of presets and a simple and powerful editor to create your own dynamic stylised lens flare effects,.
Hope it helps :)
If you're rendering to a video format, the movie codec might only be 32-bit (Quicktime for sure is), which would explain the 2GB limit. But as 3DAge said, it's much better to render to an image sequence, for all the reasons he said, BUT ALSO, if Carrara crashes (heaven forbid. Okay, when Carrara crashes...) you can just pick up from the last image rendered; no need to start again.
Hey,
Thanks everyone. It never occurred to me to render to an image sequence. When I think image sequence, I think animated gif. But that makes sense now. I use Adobe Premiere for creating movies and it does support pulling in an image sequence. I'll have to try that next time. See I knew you guys knew a better way.
As for the lens effect, yes the flare is annoying in VR 360 so I turned that off, but the 'light glow' under the lens flare setting for a llight is really useful. Without that my sun just looks like a ball, and not realistic. I agree the light effects would be only when the light is shining into the camera, but when you have a spherical camera isnt the camera a 360 and the light is therefore shining into the camera no matter where it is? I have a sherical camera with a sun rotating around it with light glow turned on. I expected the glow to always be applied but it shuts off for half my orbit even though the sun is still visible.
I'm not familiar with Premiere, so I don't know what tools it has. But I do know that After Effects (though I don't have it) can do these effects in post for you with a lot more control. I'm not really sure why you're having the issue. I've tried these effects with Spherical camera before and it seemed to work fine.
Those high of resolutions omit any of the free tools I would use for adding the lighting effects, so my suggestions from here run thin. Have you tried running a still-frame render of the scene and then looking at it loaded into Carrara as a background to see if the effect truly is failing?
Hey Dart,
Yes a single frame render also fails. Roughly I have a spotlight orbiting the spherical camera with 'light glow' on. The spotlight is attached to a sphere with a glow channel (so I can also render the sun with the camera light glow off for a different effect). The spotlight has a helper to make it always point at the spherical camera. The light glow works perfectly when it is in 'front' of the camera, but as it rotates behind it shuts off. interestingly, as it approaches the +/-180 mark, the glow is misapplied as it drifts up and away from where it should be. So the sun ball is rendered where it should be and the spot light is still attached, but the glow gets applied progressively above the ball.
Happens in stills as well as the movie in all resolutions.
The odd part is that you shouldn't even be able to see the light at all after the 180 mark - which is probably why thats happening.
Try getting rid of that light and use an aura (effects tab) on the sphere instead. I stll think it would be better to apply the image of the sun and its effects after the render, but if it has to be baked in, you'd likely be best trying something that doesn't rely upon camera angle to get the effect.
As an experiment using the same technique you're using now, try using a bulb instead of a spot. It may just provide enough angular visiblity to the camera beyond the 180 mark, but I'm not very optimistic.
The camera may be capturing 360 degrees,. but light travels in straight lines,. and lens distortion effects only occur when the light hit's the lens,. not when the light is behind the camera.
Q: are you using a sun light in cararra ?
you mention a spot light attached to a ball with a glow effect,..
Carrara has a Sunlight system, which should work better, be simpler to use,. give more accurate daylight,. and has controls to adjust the size of the sun, and it's position in the sky.
Screen grabs help,. but this sounds like it could be the iris lens effect from the lens flare,. which would normally be in an opposite direction depending on the angle of the light,
see quick example movie, as an example of this effect
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7907045/LnzFlr_OF tst.mp4
Carrara's Sun Light is very nice!
I usually crank the brightness up quite a bit. I love how it interacts with the Realistic Sky system - especially for my Spherical camera renders. In the Realistic Sky Editor we also have Sun Size and Sun Aura Size settings to help keep it from just looking like an orb in the sky. The Aura radiates from the sun image to reallistically blend into the sky.
I've heard folks knock the cloud system in the RSE, but I love it! Yes, volumetric clouds are really cool. They are. But the RSE's clouds can also be tweaked to look really nice, help add some interest into the sky, and render so immediately compared to volumetric varieties.
Sometimes I'll use all of the cloud layers using only sirius clouds at different coverage and altitude (and other) settings. Patience with setting up these clouds can be a good friend. I also like to use Tim Payne's Realistic Sky presets to get a good start on my cloud layers and tweak from there. They're also very good for many other RSE inspiration! ;)
I also like Ringo's Realistic Skies, which come with volumetric examples. Now I need to complete my SKies Presets collection and grab PhilW's Skies! Always fun to have examples!
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Also, for a similar effect as what you're using, you could opt for the Sun Light with the "Glint" lens flare preset - perhaps tweak the colors to your liking, but maybe try the preset as it is first... looks pretty cool on the sun ;)
On the subject I was mentioning earlier, I think we get much better resilts if we keep the actual image of the sun less prominent, so that we can add the full effect easier/better using the viewing software.
I'm not yet into the whole VR thing. But if I was, I'd be figuring out how to have the light source placed into the VR scene, not baked into the image.
For my videos I use my compositing software to add the actual lighting effects like that, and rather than having to track a specific light source, I create the whole thing in most, giving me full flexibility.
Here is an example of one of my typical spherical renders, but this one is resampled down to 400 x 800, and is included only as an example.
Notice how the actual sun isn't visible? This gives me full reign to place it anywhere I need it to be for any specific shot - meaning that this particular spherical map has a LOT more uses in the end.
Because when the viewer is affected by a light-source lens flare, it should create a bright flare in the eyes of the viewer. An effect to simulate temporary blindness/visual obstruction. We cannot produce this interactively if we bake it into the image. In fact, if the effect is baked in, it makes it that much harder to deal with when adding the actual effect. I hope I'm making sense.
I found this stuff out on my own, through trial and error and wasting a lot of time getting poor results. I was completely intent on doing Everything in my Carrara render. For some things, that just doesn't work out.
Many Gaming engines have these lens flares built in. We just need to place the light where it belongs, and tell the engine which effect to use. In HitFilm compositing/editing software, it's a 2D effect, bt it works as if it is truly 3D, since it remains with the brightest pixels and changes according to the angle of the camera. I think Carrara's might work the same way.
So in the above example image, since we don't have a sun image, we can simply drop in a sun object anywhere we want - to a ceratin point. Yes, we have an aura, but inside the global universe, the actual placement won't be hard - especially if it causes a flare, as it should.
Another example, which really helps to show the subtleties. Here I'm using Howler as my compositor. In Carrara, I'm using the lighting to light the scene - using the lights to paint shadows. In Howler, I create a final result for the viewer. We can already tell that, if we turn our head a little more to the right, we'll have to cover our eyes or be temporarily blinded by the incoming light.
Raw render
Howler output
If the sun's glare was created in the original, raw render, turning our head to the right would have no consequence. In a VR situation, the effect would be far worse than having no effect at all.
Which brings us back to this type of shot. This sort of diffuse sky is no accident.
If we do not, nobody would feel it to be missing.
The shot still works.
The effect can be used to add drama, but without it we lose nothing!
well even in Octane render including the standalone (as well as the carrara plugin) the glare and bloom are not supported by spherical cameras cutting off as are postwork effects as is the lensflare in the Carrara native engine.
These things make no sense in a 360° environment when you think of it unless it is meant to be seen as though through a camera which contradicts the VR concept.
for a bigger sun a sphere with glow not casting or recieving shadows placed far away in the right area could work,
Wow Dart, amazing shots! And thanks everyone for the suggestions, the've helped out immensely! I ended up taking out he lens flare effect as it didn't make much sense for spherical as some had pointed out. A soft glow worked well as a substuitute.
Here is a low resolution shot of the scene I was working on which is a lunar scene if anyone is interested.
The terrain was generated from actual height maps from the Lunar Reconnisance Orbiter and is just over two million polygons. There are 140k stars are all in realistic positions and relative intensities that I created from a star database. The stars and galactic plane all rotate around realistically, and the earth rises and sets as the moon rotates through a full month. This is all rendered in a 4k spherical movie that allows you to look around in any direction.
When I get some time I can post a how to guide for generating spherical static images and movies from Carrara if there is any interest in doing so.
Now that looks amazing! Wonderful work!
...and we can never have too many tutorials! Do it!
That is going to be a really nice VR experience!