Hi everyone,

First thing, I'm currently using Vue d'Esprit 4, only had the program for about three months, loving it, and I've started creating animations as well as still images. Render times are out of this world though. I've been reading the manual, trying to figure out ways to reduce times but I'm completely new to graphic design, and my Mac so it's coming along slowly with the amount of research I'm doing to explain what I'm reading.

To give an example, in my gallery is a pic called "Where The River Goes". I created an animation with the "airplane" effect, sending the camera through the scene. I rendered it at 15fps on broadcast quality, compressed to mpeg-4 QT video, with no animation effects on anything else in the scene, and I changed the atmosphere to a non-volumetric one for a faster render. The scene comes in at just over 3.5 million polygons. The animation was 20 seconds long at 768 x 432 with 351 frames. It took 50 hours to render. Is this normal?

Last night I built a very basic scene, a mountain and water with the "Hurricane" atmosphere and as a test, went for broke. I animated the water and the camera. A 30 second render with the "missle" effect at Ultra setting, 24fps, mpeg-4 QT compression at "best" quality, 1024 x 768 with 701 frames. The scene was just over 500,000 polygons, very simple. After rendering the third frame I hit escape, with a total processing time left of 167 hours and climbing.

I figure I must be doing a lot of things wrong. :-)

I have no problem with researching or learning, I just need to be pointed in the right direction. Anyone with suggestions or an idea of tutorials I could look up somewhere, I will really appreciate it and thanks.

Secondly, I am very interested in Vue 4 Pro. I want to learn as much as possible about my current program, really milk it's capabilities, before I make the switch, but that is the direction I'm heading in.

My current setup is a PowerMac G5 1.6 Ghz, 1.5 GB DDR 333 Ram, 80GB Serial ATA, running OSX 10.2.8. Since Vue 4 Pro is optimized for my processor and my current program isn't, will I see a substantial increase in rendering speed?

I have some other questions but I will just post new messages for them. Sorry this was so long. Thanks for any help. Take care all.

Regarding the render times of "Where The River Goes" - how long did it take to render one image? You simply have to multiply the render time for one image with the number of frames. 50 hours does not sound strange to me! This means less than 9 minutes per frame. Not bad i think. Totally normal. Regarding your new test. When have you seen last time seen an animation with this settings? Especially when you imagine that a normal (PAL) video image has a size of 768x576 pixels. I think never. One reason why not are these rendering times. Another of course is the size of the movie - you can't really do much with it. If you calculate, with your setting each frame renders shortly over 14 minutes. THAT IS GREAT. Maybe you do some short tests wether you really see a difference - in movement - between final/broadcast and ultra. For render timers it makes a huge difference, maybe not for the visual improvement. But thats something you must "define" for yourself - look and decide! Indeed, Pro is optimized for G5 processors. But i would think that, what you gain with the optimization you lose with higher render options. Therefore hard to decide. But maybe you simply try it out with the demo version? All in all you don't do too much wrong. You simply must learn that 3D means long render times. And patiently waiting for results. Good for people that meditate a lot - lololol. At that point i always tell the story of my Bryce render record - three weeks rendering time for one image! Ok, a calendar with big images, but we needed 13 images that size! Juhuu! I hope i was able to help you a little, Walther

Thanks for the post Walther. I can't really answer your question about when I've last seen an animation with those settings because I'm completely new to animation, CGD, or video making for that matter. I have no idea what PAL stands for, I have no idea what a standard video image size would be, I'm new to compression options, don't know much about the technical stuff, but I really wish I did because it would make my life a lot less complicated...lol. I just like to jump head first into the things I love and are interested in. I've been composing music for 15 years and I've never had a lesson, but I can tell you how to set up a professional recording studio, how to set up a drum rig, properly place all the mics, what compression ratios to use, how to manipulate sound on a synthesizer, how to apply effects and what settings to use, panning, mix an entire song, master an entire album, perform audio editing, etc, etc, etc. I've been having a lot of fun with Vue so far, but trying to learn a completely new field of study while trying to create professional work that I can be proud of is pretty daunting. I'm glad that my render times are not strangely slow, although you would think that the time it takes to render one image, would be multiplied by the number of frames in an animation, to get the time to render that animation, but that isn't the case really...or maybe it is. I rendered the image "Where The River Goes" at a screen resolution of 1024 x 682 with max settings on everything and it took 3 hours. I suppose someone wouldn't want to explain video settings and typical formats to me, or even better point me somewhere I can learn it for myself. I'm also interested in printing my work to canvass in the future but have no idea where to research that sort of thing....thats part of the reason I joined Renderosity, so I could learn all I want to know and learn these things from people who employ the techniques everyday. There are some amazing artists on here and I haven't even scratched the surface of this community. Anyways, Thanks Walther for your reply, you've made me feel better about what I'm doing. Take care.

I will answer tomorrow, i have to run now. Sorry!

Have a look in our backroom above and see ARCHTIPS; You will find some animation tutorials (from our 5 star animator, Phoul) and also indications for prints there. .

Ok, now i have a little more time. gebe already sent you to the tutorial secrion - good. But back to some of your questions. There are three tv (video) standards mainly. NTSC (USA and some few other countries), Secam (France and associates) and PAL (the rest). Secam and PAL does have the same resolution: 768x576 pixel and a frame rate of 25 images per second. NTSC 720x534 pixel with a frame rate 30 images per second. Here two links for more information: http://hometheater.about.com/cs/television/a/aavideoresa.htm http://www.keynoteuser.com/tips/finalcut.html Sorry that i assumed that you looked at some animations, liked them and decided to do some on your own. That would have been my way. But when you look at animations, you will recognise that they are normally not very big and not very long. Simply because of the rendering times. BTW, you see, a setting higher than a tv image is a little "overdone". Makes sense to play it on a computer but nowhere else - beside transfering it to film of course. I think it is good to follow some tutorials, but as you did with music the major point is "try it out by yourself" - in discussions with others of course. Thats why we all are here i think. You know best what you want to do with the animations, where you want to show them (for example). These things are highly connected to the settings you need. Therefore - as always - there is not a simple answer or solution. Last point (for now). Rendering times depend of many things as well. What elements you have in a scene, how they are placed relative to each other, render settings (of course), processor speed (of course) etc etc. Therefore rendering one image of an animation only gives an idea, not the real value how long the final rendering time will be. Example: anti-aliasing settings can change the rendering times drastically. Therfore it is necessary that you do some testings what anti-aliasing settings you really need in an animation. What the eye really can see and what is only theory. The same with the other settings. Do some tests and find out what is best to you and your needs. I normally render in final only - enough (for me) for posting images on the Internet. Maybe because i come originally from the animation industry and learned it like that - to keep settings as low as possible to get jobs done. But thats my very personal pov - others do have other experiences and it is more than 10 years now that i gave up animation. Maybe times has changed since then. Find it out for yourself! 3 hours for the image you mentioned sounds damned fast. So be happy that you have such a fast machine. Sorry for this long answer again - all my fault. Walther

A post is never too long, in my opinion Walther, especially when you're helping me out. I'm taking a look at all the tutorials and all your comments have been very helpful. I'll also check out those links you provided. I'll figure things out, I always do. Thanks for all your help, it's very much appreciated. --- Ryan

Also, if you're interested in why NTSC went for an inferior picture resolution and an uneccessarily high frame rate - the ideal fps would have been 24, the speed the film they were broadcasting was shot at - they didn't have much choice. The TVs these standards were developed for used mains frequency as the clock pulse for scanning. The USA, Canada, Japan and Mexico all have 60Hz mains, most of the rest of the world has 50Hz.

With 50Hz/25fps not too much of a problem - broadcast a movie at 1fps too fast, or repeat every 24th frame, nobody much is going to notice - 60Hz and 30fps though, nightmare!

Real big problem I'm getting at the moment is with 16:9 (AKA Widescreen or Letterbox) format. Vue insists that this is 768 x 432, which is simply incorrect. Anamorphic PAL DV is 768 x 576 with a 1.42 pixel aspect ratio. There actually is a standard around that uses 768 x 432, HDTV, but it's never caught on.

While I normally use Vue as a hobbyist, this is causing me a real headache ATM - having promised to produce some animations, for links in a company video, I can't get either my Vue Pro, nor the company's 3D Max, to produce anything that Adobe Premiere will render in the correct aspect ratio:(

Still, it's the weekend now, so who cares!

John

Why not using the "free aspect ratio" instead. There you can enter whatever values you want. No need to follow some pre-definitions when you can define your own. I think the biggest problem really is, that some devices don't use squared pixels but rectangle sized. That makes it really tricky. AND, i dont agree that a repeated frame is not visible. It is! The human eye is very sensitive to that. Thats the reason why professional animations even render 50 fields (it is called like that) to make the movements smoother. Therefore i would go for video frame rates. All your surrounding probably is video and not film. Have a nice weekend, Walther

Walther,

I have tried "other x/y ratio" in avanced options, it still didn't let me enter the correct values. Oddly the company's copy of 3DS Max 5 is equally unhelpful. Both pieces of software seem to think they know better,which they don't!

I wasn't advocating repeating every 24th frame BTW, just trying to give an historical perspective on why we have such odd standards. I believe that NTSC broadcasters duplicate every 4th movie frame, not sure if that's better or worse! Broadcasters talk about "fields" rather than "frames" coz that's what they are, or were, directional changes in a magnetic field that deflects the electron streams from the guns, only meaningful in terms of CRTs though isn't it?

You have a nice Sunday at least, now being 20minutes to 1a.m. UK time!

John

Well, i started commercially with computer animation in 1984. And i know for sure that the differences between frame rates are not balanced by duplicating images. Try it out - you will definetly see it. Frames - fields. Each video image (frame) is in fact divided into two images each with half the resolutions. Fields. Normally one contains the even scanlines, the other the odd ones. But you can have access to each field with professional video equipment. Therefore it makes sense to render 50 images per second (PAL/Secam or 60 (NTSC) to get smoother movements. I am very surprised that the apsect ratios are not rendered right - when you enter specific values. I will try that.