Render zone, easy and saved !

[Pierre]

Render zone, easy and saved !

Some of the issues I encounter now with the "zoom bar" as "render bar" (not exhaustive list) :
- Whenever you change the zoom settings to work on your anim, you loose the render start/end parameters !
- If you need to zoom-in/out to figure out what you want to render you loose the render start/end parameters
- You loose your zoom setting when you change the render area for a quick render
- If you want to render less than 20 frames and you are with frame numbers above the thousand, you can't even read the frame number your selecting on the zoom bar.
- it's not convenient to set the start/end point with the mouse to select a frame out of several thousands (just waste of time)
- it's not possible to render several chunks of an animation in one render session

I'm wishing for those animation basics :
- the possibility to type in the render start and render end frame numbers
- to have those numbers saved within the file and unrelated to the zoom
- short-key to set 'start render point' and 'end render point' on currently selected frame
- the possibility to have 2 render zones (*)
> a "final" one to keep track of start and end of scene
> a "work" one that would be used by the animation controls (play, first, last) and for draft renders



Thanks

Pierre

(*) or more 'final' zones. The best solution would be obviously to have 2 zones per take and the possibility to duplicate takes. Did I miss this feature ?

PS: I'd be interested to know how many people use Cheetah to run 1k+frame animation (with more than the camera moving). If they work on 3D animations with other tools, what reasons are keeping you from using C3D ?

 

[podperson]

I'm guessing your zoom problems are a consequence of working in the view of the camera you're rendering from. Make a second camera to perform adjustments in OR explicitly key the settings of the render camera in the first frame.

it's not possible to render several chunks of an animation in one render session

Well, it's possible but inconvenient. Make multiple copies of the file and fire off one render for each copy. Then go to bed...

the possibility to type in the render start and render end frame numbers

And, indeed, to type in the frame rate. While we're at it, how about using SMPTE style frame numbering: [ minutes ] : [ seconds ] : [ frames ] ?

In most tools these days, for example, " 2 : 30 : " -> the beginning of the 150th second.

C3D's Animation Deficiencies

I'd be interested to know how many people use Cheetah to run 1k+frame animation (with more than the camera moving). If they work on 3D animations with other tools, what reasons are keeping you from using C3D?

I'd guess -- only a very few people with time on their hands and no alternatives to work with. Personally, aside from relatively simple things such as fly-throughs, C3D seems to me to be highly unsuited for long-form animation as it currently stands. It's quite good for very short animation sequences (walk cycles ) but even there, far from perfect.

1) It's very difficult to adjust the timings, even of fairly simple things, once you've laid out an animation. E.g. if you have a long animation of a character doing something, and you decide that this particular sequence is a little wrongly paced, you can't just kill some frames there and have everything else adjust accordingly. This is painful even for quite simple animations, such as walk cycles, when the individual keys are fine, but the pacing of secondary actions is not quite right.

The solution here would be some form of "dope sheet" support, or simply a more refined timeline (which discloses to show specific keyframes, motion graphcs, etc. ... the way, say, Max or Final Cut Pro or pretty much any serious animation package does things).

2) There's no good way of isolating and encapsulating complexity. (E.g. you can't give a character a walk cycle, and then use a smart folder (say) to import it, and have it walk along some arbitrary path. Adding this much to C3D would probably be fairly easy, but the next level of sophistication (being able to tweak the animation here and there while retaining links to the original walk cycle) are a huge deal, and not something I envisage being added to C3D any time soon.

There's no simple solution here -- most of the "big boys" have been wrestling with these issues for a decade or more and have produced extremely sophisticated solutions (e.g. I bought 3D Studio Max R3 + Character Studio in 1999; it had pretty much every feature you could list in this department including motion graphs, dope sheets, node views, specific tools for managing walks and step spacing), including pretty much every wishlist item on this forum except for texture displacement, subsurface scattering and caustics, and they've been refining the UIs for all of this pretty aggressively for the last six major releases ...).

Final Aside: it's lose, not loose. Just learn that and you'll be more literate than 95% of English speakers on the internet. For bonus points, it's you're (you are) and not your (second person possessive)

 

[Martin]

Hi,
for the first I will stay with one render zone since I'm worried that more render zones will mess up the UI. But I've added the numerical entering of render zone beginning to render zone end on my todo list. But it might take some time since my main focus is on the modeling tools and the material system at the moment. And working on ten features is parallel is not a good idea.

In general you have to be careful to compare timelines from compositing apps and 3D apps since they have to serve different task. While a 5min video clip isn't very uncommon in compositing is would consider it quite uncommon to render a 5 min animation in once take. Such animations are usually split up in smaller takes.

If you use the timeline of Maya or C4D for example you will see that they are quite similar to Cheetah3Ds timeline.

Concerning animation complexity as podperson mentioned. Cheetah3D was written with non-linear animation in mind. And the take system in Cheetah3D is prepared to mix two animations like a walk cycle along a spline. There is mainly the UI missing which allows composite two takes. But the composer UI will come some time in the future.:wink:

Bye,
Martin

 

[Pierre]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your reply.

I can understand that C3D is targeted at modelling and not at (3D) video editing, fine.

If you want us to work on the Takes principle, please let us at least duplicate takes (and render selected takes).

Then the two features :
- to have in-out render position saved within the file (like next to the take length) and unrelated to the zoom
- short-key to set 'start render point' and 'end render point' on currently selected frame
do not interfere with the GUI and therefore shall not overload it. Do you agree ?

Finally, you did not mention anything about the fact that the render zoom tighten to the timeline zoom is a mess. Come on, every time you change the zoom you loose your take in an out render point !

Actually the timeline zoom is perfect, we just don't need to have it working as the render zone. Pretty simple.

Thanks

Pierre

 

[podperson]

In general you have to be careful to compare timelines from compositing apps and 3D apps since they have to serve different task

Maybe ten years ago. Today, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, and 3D Studio Max have remarkably similar f-curve / keyframe / dopesheet / whatever you call it editors. The fact is, I may be editing a 30 minute documentary, but I still need to be able to finesse the way each caption appears, or whatever.

It's not like C3D's timeline has got amazing fine-control that's missing in long form editors... quite the reverse. I'm not trying to beat up on you -- I'm just saying there's a heck of a lot of engineering in some of these thousand dollar plus programs, and it's there for a reason.

If you use the timeline of Maya or C4D for example you will see that they are quite similar to Cheetah3Ds timeline.

The devil is in the details.

I can only really work with one object at a time in C3D ... which makes performing timing adjustments for a walk cycle, say, a nightmare.

 

[Martin]

I can only really work with one object at a time in C3D ... which makes performing timing adjustments for a walk cycle, say, a nightmare.

That's simply because the animation controls were written at a time when Cheetah3D couldn't handle multi object selections. But also these controls will be updated in the future to handle multi object selections. That is just a matter of time.

Bye,
Martin