Hey guys,

Starting a resource page soon where we can get a lot of good Vue info. I recently did an animation for a client where I simply could not control the flickering of trees and it became a major distraction (to me...not so much them).

There were so many threads, suggestions, and confusion to the matter that I'm starting a render challenge about it. I hope to run a render of it every night (but that may not work since there's job related ish that needs to be done) but I want to have some issues hammered out within a week or so.

Then the findings will be available at VueRealism.Com and in PDF format, like all future renderchallenges.

Now, I'm using the Bulky Conifer so I dont think posting the Vue file itself will work (unless you own it), but am accepting all thoughts on the possible remedies. I'm also doing a slight wind/breeze test on it as well.

http://www.vuerealism.com/renderchallenge01/tree01.wmv (1 MB)

GI Lighting (+0.40, 55%, 50%)
Quality boost = -1.0
Ambience: .30 Sky Dome Gain: .85

User settings
OAA (9,9) = 69%
TAA (4,16) = 85%
Adv Efx Qual: 46%

Wind Disabled
Breeze enabled (30% intensity)
Ignore Indirect Lighting on Plants Unchecked
TGA Sequence: 10 seconds, 25fps, 640x480

225 frames = 9hrs 37mins
2 Computers Rendering

Message edited on: 03/21/2006 09:48

Responding to my own post.... I believe my current issue has to do with my GI boost being at -1.0. Maybe a change in this will result in less flickering, yet unfortunately yields much slower results. I think I'll shorten the animation length this next session to just the part dealing with the flickering and not the last 4 seconds. Breeze looks like it make have to be higher than 30% to simulate your average day IMO. Any other ideas other than increasing GI? I have a feeling GI may not be the greatest solution for animation unless you have a big budget and a loooong time.

Hi Ryan I don't know if you've tried this tip, but according to Philippe Bouyer (Phoul / www.belino.net) , to avoid flickering in animations, what he does is:- Render Options ============== - Uncheck Texture Anti-Aliasing - Boost Object Antialiasing (Subrays Min = 6, Max = 24) Fingers crossed that this helps! All the best

Too much time has gone by for me to edit a post??? Anways.... EDIT: Come to think of it, having "Ignore Indirect Lighting on Plants" could have a MAJOR impact on this as well. I'm currently running a 6 second animation at 15fps with simply a GI boost. This will come next if not remedied.

Actually, I tried his suggestion and it didn't help. I think it's more of a guideline for objects than it is vegetation. Texture AA might be off simply for speed reasons...but maybe not. It may make a difference. As for the OAA, I dont think it's that really...because it's the surface of the leaves that's the issue. If I were getting flickering of edges and the trunk I think it might be that. I think the problem is there are diff types of flickering with diff causes. Mine might be GI. On non GI, it may be OAA. Maybe it's the TAA. Tus, this is the purpose of this RC...elimination of flickering with GI animations. :)

Attached Link: http://users.tns.net/~mwalter1/tutorials.htm

Hey Peggy. I actually have that printed and next to my desk. :) Great resource btw. This is more of what we need as tuts/books are minimal at this point.

TEST 2 - INCREASE GI'S EFFECT

In this test, I increased GI from -1.0 to +1.0 to decrease the amount of flickering on the leaves. As you can see, this helped the overall problem, but it's still not as spot on as I'd like to see. Also, this helped, but at what cost? Render time doubled from around 5 minutes a frame to 11 minutes a frame.

As a side note, I also increased breeze to 40% which I like a bit better overall.

At this point, I'd possibly avoid GI for renderings with vegetation, but I want to run a test with Ignore Indirect Lighting on Plants checked to see what effect that may have on the animation.

http://www.vuerealism.com/renderchallenge01/tree02.wmv (2 MB)

GI Lighting (+0.40, 55%, 50%)
Quality boost = +1.0
Ambience: .30 Sky Dome Gain: .85

User settings
OAA (9,9) = 69%
TAA (4,16) = 85%
Adv Efx Qual: 46%

Wind Disabled
Breeze enabled (40% intensity)
Ignore Indirect Lighting on Plants Unchecked
TGA Sequence

15fps = 150 frames = 13hrs 40mins (11 minutes per frame)
2 Computers Rendering

Message edited on: 03/22/2006 08:34

A new version will appear sometime tomorrow night as I have to use my farm to render out a quick animation for my job until then. More to come...

Also...still wanna hear CC and possible alternate solutions. X number of heads is better than 1.

That looks great! I can't see any flickering. I'd like to see what it does at Quality Boost set to None (which is still pretty good), and Ignore Indirect Lighting on Plant selected. That should reduce the render time without sacrificing too much quality. Peggy

I'll definitely try it with a boost of None if -1.0 with Ignore Indirect Lighting on Plants is not satisfactory.

I know it doesn't comply with that challenge thing, but if you are in a hurry (often the case with a client), you should consider post-work on an editing software. I don't do animation in Vue yet, but watching yours reminds me of similar problems I had with animating still pictures in editing (doing that famous "Ken Burn" effect). Same flicker ! In the soft I use for editing (Final Cut) there's a filter called animation blur. By adjusting settings, I was able to get rid of that flicker with (very) minor loss of quality. I'm sure it's a current function on others softs. Another advantage : no increase in render time. If you are interested and if I have a little time this evening, I will try with both your tests and post the results. Again, I know it's not a "purist" way to do it, but from my experience with clients : anything that does the job

Attached Link: http://www.cornucopia3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1791

I left Paris for London where I am working for a british Studio. Since 2 weeks. Big production, blablabla... Some works with animated vue things! The biggest scenes I ever work on. Biggest renders, frames size, too. Speechless...
So, again, I can confirm (what I said in my previous im, threads, topics, etc) that in almost all cases animations not need TAA, but a good OAA's Threshold.

Min and Max are the tools. Threshold is Einstein. Give to Einstein poor tools he will try to make nice work. With good tools, good Min and Max, the genius will give very very nice work. You see? The most important thing is to put an Einstein in your parameters: a great threshold!

So, please try for OAA

• systematic
• min 6 ( or more to e.g. 18 )
• max 24 ( or more to e.g. 48 )
• threshold 75, but I recommand almost always 95 for slow camera movement or action in front of camera! If fast things, and lot of motion blur you can enter e.g. 55.

And if you scene is GI scene, enter +1 to +3 in atm parameters.

If you will get bad result it is because you will make something wrong in your parameters or something wrong in your scene (and we could not know what it could be without open the scene. Mor blablabla could not help anymore). In advance I am sorry if you don't believe me.

Best regards.
Philippe Bouyer
www.belino.net

Message edited on: 03/23/2006 05:55

That totally could be. I'm just sort of the type of person who needs to see it first. I just did a 10 second animation with OAA and TAA turned on. Next, I'll do it off. The thing I'm worried about is what turning off TAA will do to things such as brick work or gravel texture, both which can cause "flickering" and jumpiness. It's not that I dont believe you. I know how far ahead of me you are in this stuff.

JMC95: Yeah, I tried that. The problem with that is it appears to only really be good for closer shots. I tried to apply a blur via PhotoShop, but I literally had over 5,000 trees in the distance flickering on me and once I got it blurred to a good level for them, the foreground got blurred. But you're right, that IS sometimes an option.

TEST 3 - IGNORE INDIRECT LIGHTING ON PLANTS WITH LOWERED GI

Part 3 of my test. As we saw in the last 2 videos, increasing the GI boost from -1.0 to 1.0 helped a lot, but at the expense of double the rendering time (ack). I'm not a fan of doubling render times unless needed...

For both of those videos, IILOP was left unchecked.

For this test, I've lowered the GI back to -1.0, but have IILOP checked ON now. We'll see what this does to the look of the animation....

What I was surprised to find was I actually had about equal rendering time as with IILOP turned off as I did on. However, the flicker was very evident.

At this point, I've decided never to use GI in an animation until Vue gets the GI speed up a bit. The hit you take is just too rough.

http://www.vuerealism.com/renderchallenge01/tree03.wmv (2.7 MB)

GI Lighting (+0.40, 55%, 50%)
Quality boost = -1.0
Ambience: .30 Sky Dome Gain: .85

User settings
OAA (9,9) = 69%
TAA (4,16) = 85%
Adv Efx Qual: 46%

Wind Disabled
Breeze enabled (40% intensity)
Ignore Indirect Lighting on Plants CHECKED
TGA Sequence

15fps = 150 frames = 6hrs 34mins (5.2 minutes per frame)
2 Computers Rendering

The flicker is better, but you probably need GI at 1.0 or better. (Thanks Phoul...haha). http://www.vuerealism.com/renderchallenge01/tree04.wmv (2.7 MB) Boost = 0 OAA (6,24) TAA off Breeze disabled 15fps = 90 frames = 2 hrs 49mins = (3.5 minutes per frame)

Yep - imho that looks by far the best version Ryan - and 3.5 mins per frame is the also by far the fastest of all the tests so far. I guess the question is whether or not GI 1.0 improves the quality enough to justify the hit to the render overhead.

And I expect that question to be answered over the weekend.

<--- pedals faster to speed up Renders >9o)

EDIT: It may be Sunday night as I have a building rendering to fix (the one I posted earlier) which is quite intensive.

Hello all.

I wrote ...threshold 75, but I recommand almost always 95 for slow camera movement or action in front of camera! If fast things, and lot of motion blur you can enter e.g. 55. Oups... Here a small correction in my small english (to be more clear): "...threshold 75, but I recommand almost always 95 for slow camera movement! Otherwise, if fast things, and lot of motion blur you can enter e.g. 55." Hope that 's help somebody else. Voili voilu.

Philippe Bouyer
www.belino.net

Message edited on: 03/24/2006 16:43