A few observations

[OTB Designworks]

So, I have been doing a bunch of animation exports during the last week with my new Mac Pro.

I must admit that I have been less than impressed with the render times for the projects I have run through it. I would be very interested in getting other people's reactions, as well as perhaps some advice to minimize times. I was really hoping that this new rig would allow me to start importing some highly complex models (160 acres of commercial buildings in an urban core, let's say ) and begin generating my animations in a raytracer.

The new computer is a 3.2ghz 8 core, 10 gig of RAM, 7200 SATA drives, and the 8800GT GPU.

I am animating very simple text and logo animations, for a 10 second title sequence. I am exporting at fairly high resolutions, 2560 x 1440 (2x 720pHD for Ken Burns effect, or what have you), but the render times are still beyond realistically profitable time.

I am lighting the scene with an HDR, using one additional point light, no radiosity tag (much as I would like to use it), and no shadows checked in my camera. The material used has a reflectivity of .85, 0 angle (much as I would like to bump this up), ambient and diffuse settings of .1, and no transparency.

I am averaging between 135 and 145 seconds a frame. And this is without DOF, radiosity, caustics, more lights, or very much geometry.

While I know that individual frames from Shrek took approx 56 hours to render and that I can't expect anything approaching that sort of quality/complexity, I wonder if I can ever hope to even pull off a "simple" rendered city fly over.

The most recent animation I exported, from Sketchup, was 8911 frames, 2560 x 1440, averaged 14 seconds a frame, and took 34 hours. This was with a model that had over 1.6 million polygons, though no 3D trees or anything like that.

Should I just give up the dream right now? I thought this new computer would really open up my options with Cheetah and now I am not so sure.

On the other hand, I am completely loving using Cheetah to create models that I am exporting as STL's and having 3D printed in metal!! Amazing technology and Cheetah has impressed me not only with its wide range of tools, but that it just works, and is fairly easy to figure out (thank you particularly Frank, Andrew, podperson, and of course Martin). So, I am not in any way bashing Cheetah! I was just hoping that I was going to be able to up my game and use Cheetah for a bunch more of my products.

What do you guys think?

cheers, chuck

[luke Bocchinelli]

maybe post the model on a server so others might be able to give advice on why it's taking so long.

Also your your render size is a bit on the heavy side, 1920 x 1080 would be more than OK for most HD projects.

Also the hardware you are using is about as fast as it gets, so it seems unlikely that it's a hardware problem, more of a setup problem.

I did a quick test along your guidelines and a frame took about 1.5 secs on a lowley macpro 2.6 quad !

Which is why, I think the only way to get an answer that makes sense for you is to see the file that your working on.

Also why are you using Ken Burns effect for animation, when it's a panning or zooming utility for stllls ?

Regards

Luke

[OTB Designworks]

Hi Luke, thanks for the response.

I am sure that you are absolutely correct about setup versus hardware.

I am including the most recent animations I have been working with; there are two takes. Does a 32 bit HDR take longer to render than a 16 bit? That might have something to do with it as I am using a custom 32 bit HDR that I made in photoshop.

I have found that, for the least flickery, and smoothest animations, it is highly beneficial to export your images (for the initial image sequences)at twice the pixel resolution and then downsize the movie to necessary size at export time. It makes a big difference using this technique, especially with Sketchup exports. This also gives you plenty of image size, should zooming and panning be necessary.

I am actually not using Ken Burns effect, I was just using that as an example of when having an image much larger than the final export size.

My final exports are 1280 x 720 (720p HD)

[luke Bocchinelli]

Originally Posted by kannonbal

Hi Luke, thanks for the response.

I am including the most recent animations I have been working with; there are two takes. Does a 32 bit HDR take longer to render than a 16 bit? That might have something to do with it as I am using a custom 32 bit HDR that I made in photoshop.

I have found that, for the least flickery, and smoothest animations, it is highly beneficial to export your images (for the initial image sequences)at twice the pixel resolution and then downsize the movie to necessary size at export time. It makes a big difference using this technique, especially with Sketchup exports. This also gives you plenty of image size, should zooming and panning be necessary.

I am actually not using Ken Burns effect, I was just using that as an example of when having an image much larger than the final export size.

My final exports are 1280 x 720 (720p HD)

Dear kannonbal

Had a quick look at your file and adjusted the main things that where causing your problem without changing the concept of your movie.

Frame render ave time 1.3 secs

! the main thing was x16 max on the camera, x2 or x4 will be fine for the amimation,

Then the material orange had I think of 2 or 5 which slows render times down a lot. as well as an emissive material you had for a backdrop which in your case you don't really need as you can get away with changing the colour of the background from the camera.

I posted a sample test movie and added a little zoom blur for fun which took all of about 5 mins to render and put together for you:

http://www.bocchinelli.com/ibi.mov (564K)

re the sketchup comments, I can see why you are going up in size but it's not the best program for high quality animations, better off exporting to a render program and do the same exercise without trying to photorealistic.

Once again re panning and zooming better to render a large still and use that in the edit and keep the main res of the movie to your size above

finally herewith adjusted jas file from sample movie


Regards

Luke

[frank beckmann]

Hi Chuck.
I´m not a techi, so maybe I look from a different angle at the points you´re mentioned. Nevertheless I grab your file. There are a few killer settings in I would never ever use: Antialiasing at 16x16 and of course the size. I corrected some settings to my "normals" alongside some changes in the geometrie/spline/extrude settings. I activated HDRI, the background plane with the angle reflective material and AO, but turn off the light. The rendering took 11295sec on my Intel iMac´06 and it looks awesome, but is not playable at this 2560x1440 size. (For what kind of purpose is that huge output?)
What else can I say? (Other than the text is a bit out of focus at the end of the animation )

With kindest regards
Frank

[ttrw]

Hi Kannonbal

I'm just coming to the end of a BSc in CAD, and one thing I have been learning about recently is why Sketchup is not as great for 3D animation as it initially seems.

Sketchup outputs surfaces as 'double normals', i.e. when you apply a texture to a surface, you will see a surface on both sides (even if you only applied a texture to a single side). Having double normals means that when you export a Sketchup file, there is twice the amount of render material than is required, slowing the whole process right down.

When building a flat surface with a texture, if that surface is to be included within an animation, one should only include the texture on the side that it is being viewed, otherwise you are wasting valuable time rendering something that won't be seen. I hope that makes sense?

This is one of the main reasons why I went for C3D in the end. I'll probably buy Sketch-up anyway, because as a static modeller, SU is superb, and really easy to use, and SU Podium also looks like a great renderer too- when it finally gets the OSX treatment.

Another thing, it is worth keeping textured surfaces that are in the background, as low resolution (ie pixel size) as is possible. Again there is no point applying a high resolution texture to something that is way back in the background, and can't really be seen.

Therefore, imo, it would be better to learn C3D instead, and do the whole animation and rendering within Cheetah3D. I'm also keeping my eye on Kinemac too- as this looks like it also will be a fantastic real-time 3D front end for C3D!

I hope that helps!

Tom

[OTB Designworks]

WOW! Thanks a lot guys, for taking the time to look at my file

I really appreciate it!

To be honest, I completely missed that I had cranked the anti-aliasing up to 16 x16, so thanks for pointing that out.

Luke, what did you mean by the orange material being 2 or 5? The background plane was turned off for the animations, as I exported it out as a separate still image for compositing in FCE, which means I exported the animation with a transparent background. It has a bump map and all, so I couldn't just use a camera background. The zoom blur was a nice touch! I might think about doing something like that, too.

Thanks Frank for playing around with this model, too. Why would the text be out of focus at the end? Is there anything I can do to fix that?

The Sketchup model is enormous. It really does have 4.2 million edges, 430 materials, and 1.45 million faces. It is a model of a 160 acre proposed urban core, with over 1000 2D trees, people, etc etc. It is a really massive model. I could not even remotely image modeling this monster in Cheetah!

Now, I could image exporting it out in pieces and reassembling in Cheetah for some animating, though just the thought of dialing in 430 materials sounds ugly. But, I am guessing, the render times would be off the charts and probably not realistic.

I have been making high quality animations in SU for years, and I have gotten very good achieving great quality with what I think are reasonable render times 13-20 sec frame). The single most important "trick" in achieving excellent results is to export at twice the needed resolution and then using the video editor to "force" these big images into the desired frame size. I don't know the technical reasons for why it works, but it makes an amazing difference.

While I appreciate that Sketchup may not be the best animation software, I know of no other software that allows me to do what I do in the amount of time that I do it. Raytrace/HDRI rendering is another whole ball of wax and I am still not convinced that I could use any of them to consistently animate my huge models, if only because of the time involved. Between transferring and assembling the SU model into Cheetah, setting up materials, and actually exporting, I think we are talking huge amounts of time.

Thanks again guys, for taking the time! If you think of anything else, please let me know.

Cheers, Chuck

[frank beckmann]

Originally Posted by kannonbal

Thanks Frank for playing around with this model, too. Why would the text be out of focus at the end? Is there anything I can do to fix that?

Hi Chuck.
I didn´t edit the timeline so in the image above you can see the last frame and all you can read is "Town Centre Conc.......". So the rest never reaches the main focus of the camera.

With kindest regards
Frank

[OTB Designworks]

Hi frank.
There are two takes, the first is 191 frames and the second is 120 frames, FWIW.

Cheers, Chuck (thanks again!)

[ttrw]

Originally Posted by kannonbal

While I appreciate that Sketchup may not be the best animation software, I know of no other software that allows me to do what I do in the amount of time that I do it.

Hey Chuck, don't get me wrong. I absolutely love Sketchup for all those reasons you also love it. I've also been trying to import dxf's into C3D, and because of the way C3D handles units and scale, have been having a lot of obstacles as C3D doesn't really appear to be designed to work that way (although C3D is brilliant with what it does do already). OTOH Sketchup handles dxf/dwg import with ease.

It's been great too watching Luke and Frank- both who are masters of C3D, so I too have learnt more today than I have all week!

I guess I'll have to buy Sketchup too, and get onto Google about the double normals situation. BTW, have you seen the SU Animate plugin? Apparently that has now been written and released for Mac now.

Tom