Attached Link: http://http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_6/

"This video was entirely created, animated and rendered in Vue 6."

Time to put it to the test.

Some of those clips are included as samples, time to render them out using their settings and see if we can get the same results.

I'll start with "A New Dawn," rendered at a smaller = 640x 272.

I've only got a two computer render cow, so it will probably take me days to render, but I'll post the results here.

The reason I'm doing this is because I bought Vue 6 Infinite because of that demo reel, but any animation tests I've done look BAD with crawling digital artifacts.

So there is a BIG DIFFERENCE in the results I'm able to get using the ULTRA SETTING and what they got for the demo reel.

I hope I'm wrong and these tests turn out just as good as what they got.  If not, maybe they can give us a tutorial and show us how to get the great results.

Of course for single images, it's amazing!  But I'm interested in using Vue 6 for animation, as advertised.

I am 100% sure this demo reel was rendered with Vue, what do you assu,e it was rendered with? Making animatings in vue takes a bit practice to get everything flicker-free.

Theres some nice videos rendered by users at cornucopia, some would require more anti-aliasing to compete with the e-on video, but keep in mind that most users there do not have large render farms to render in such a quality. I guess for using all scenes in the demo video in this quality your computer could be rendering several weeks.

I have no doubt that they made the video with vue 6, but also have no doubt that you need a lot of experience to make and cutting in this quality.

Hey, great news Heagerst, I'm relieved to hear it can be done in Vue.  Could you please post one of your vue animations, and some tips on how you rendered it?

I'm rendering out one of their demo reel samples now using their original settings.  I can't wait to see it, but it's got about thirteen hours to go.

I'm looking forward to seeing your work.

Animations require lots of AA indeed, also there is a parametrer called distanc blurring in the animations parameters. You need to check this options to avoid flickering. And maybe use the "soft" antialiasing preset.
The demo reel was created py Phoul, the best and most experienced Vue animation expert around, so don't expect to get this kind of results just after a few weeks of using Vue. Some of his scens are available either for free or a small fee over at cornucopia3d. Maybe you could get some of them and study the setings.

Hey Bruno

Vue 6 came with some of Phoul's animations that he did for the demo reel.  So, If I use one that he set up, with his render settings, then the only experience I need is how to press the render button.  Unless for some reason he changed up the settings. But that wouldn't make any sense, would it?

Hadn't even noticed there were Phoul animations in the animations folder!
I guess the settings in these files are straight out of Phoul's machine, unless he has some secrets he wants to keep from us!
I checked his render settings a bit, and he indeed uses a lot of AA, and the "soft" AA preset. But no distance blurring, though. Distance blurring should be used  for reducing the flickering on distant plants or ecosystems, so it was not needed for these sample scenes. Well, that's what they say in the maual, anyway.

Quote - Hey, great news Heagerst, I'm relieved to hear it can be done in Vue.  Could you please post one of your vue animations, and some tips on how you rendered it?

I'm rendering out one of their demo reel samples now using their original settings.  I can't wait to see it, but it's got about thirteen hours to go.

I'm looking forward to seeing your work.

I'm not much into animations, as i belong to the poor users working with 1 single machine and barely have the patience to wait many days for a few seconds of animation. But theres loads of videos at the cornucopia gallery, they have a seperate section for animations. Just look through there what the users did, amazed me more then one time.

The results are in.  I finished rendering one of their demo reel animations, using Phoul's settings.  But before I post the results, I need to ask E-onsoftware a question.

So, I've gone to their web site and posted the question.  Hopefully they'll answer shortly.

Side note:  but the 16 second animation took two newer PC's thirteen hours to render.  Not too bad.  I can see where even a five machine render-cow farm would cut the time down considerably.  Also, render cow works for me without a hitch.  So nice going there.

One day later and I got a courteous response which said I should download the latest version and build.

It also said that Phoul’s demo animation may have had some settings changed.  Hmmm.  He didn’t bother to say why.

So I’ll do the updates and try again.  But I can tell you, my first test render looked BAD with the dreaded crawling digital artifacts, or flickering or static.  Whatever you want to call it.  It might be fine for a lowres web copy, but not anything you would want to present to a client.

I think Phoul renders large then interpolates the images down to their final size...that way you can get longer animations done at a reduced quality settings and let the resizing process create the AA.

Just the fact that you decided to render out at a smaller frame size doesn't make your test hold water as you are  negating one of the tricks often used to create better quality from lower quality render settings.
Try the test again at full resolution, interpolate down to final animation size and I can assure you the quality will be  100% better.

Cheers

I think your result proves that the scene is the right one, but they probably used other rendering settings (probably better AA quality) for their broadcast demo reel. Maybe they did so to not frustrate users that try a render with standard settings. Who loves to see a progress bar that tells you like 287 hours left or so?

So Cheers!

Based on your rationale:  the flawed test I did could be remedied by just reducing it’s size?

Nope.  I tried it, it still looks bad.  But it is smaller.  So your "smaller is better" theory doesn't hold water.

Cheers.

It does hold water...if you use bicubic interpolation when resizing and don't resize at an odd ratio you will get AA. This is why one of the most obscure but useful feature requests by studios is to be able to animate frame sizes while rendering - it's so high detail scenes that take ages to render at high quality can automatically be rendered at larger resoltions but with lower quality settings then just resized as a post process. Of course resizing down only works as a post process.
You said that you rendered it smaller...that will not work - render large then resize at the compositing stage.

Cheers

Indeed, resizing works perfectly as antialiasing; I often render only large Preview pics  (stills) and then resizing the image in PShop creating a  very nice AA effect; it should work with animation too! (...using an videoprog. for resizing)

Hello, 

I am not visiting Renderosity often; I am sorry... I just miss time; I am so busy. 
Well. Just a note right now. 

Every scenes need specific AA parameters. For instance lot of details with many plants and tiny materials will need high values for AA. But flat materials, don't need high AA. SO, no rules. 
 
The renders for the demo was done with a large value of pixels for HQ presentation at last  Siggraph. So reducing the size of the frame it is like a new path of AA. 
For instance and clarify, make a very large render with poor AA quality, then resize to lower version, you will be able to get nice AA.

Hope that helps.   

Thanks.

Philippe Bouyer
www.belino.net

PS : forgot... AA mean Anti-aliasing. And only for Object ! I should say OAA. I never use TAA; texture Anti Alising; no time to loose ;-) 
Have fun with Vue.

Thanks for dropping by and trying to help Phoul.  I'm sure every scene needs it's own AA, but this test was all about rendering out one of your samples in Vue to see if I could get results like yours.  The theory being, if they're your settings, you would think you would at least get acceptable results.

So now I've rendered out your animation a second time using the full resolution - untouched and I still get these little black bars that dance around on the water.  Just enough to ruin the clip.  I mean, if you have to be a voodoo priest to get broadcast quality animation, then it's not very useful for the masses.  And yes I get it, you guys that use it for stills love it.  But just try some animations yourself, you'll see what I mean.

So I don't know what to say now.  If I can't get good results with your settings, I feel like I just wasted my money.  I was guessing that you use the Vue plugin for Maya and render in Maya. 

Can I come to your studio for an afternoon to see how the master does it?  You're just a hop, skip and an ocean away.  (just kidding)

Thanks for the tips anyway.  Anybody want to buy a slightly used copy of Vue?

I will say that this latest build of Vue 6 infinite is considered a beta, so this might be a bug they're still working on.

But for now, I'd say for still images:  4.5 out of five stars.

Animation (unless your Phoul)  2 stars.

Phoul's demo reel for marketing purposes: FIVE STARS.

And Phoul, you could have easily solved this by offering up your settings for "A New Dawn."

Phoul doesn't live off fresh water, so I understand he wants to keep some secrets from us. But you said something about black squares? No this would be a bug if black pixels are showing in your renders.
As Attileus said, rendering bigger images and shrinking them in a paint program DOES act like antialiasing, every studio does it this way. A lot faster.
Do you render your animations in individual frames, or just in a video format? If the latter, you may get a lower quality due to some compression, depending on the video formaat.

Quote - Thanks for dropping by and trying to help Phoul.  I'm sure every scene needs it's own AA, but this test was all about rendering out one of your samples in Vue to see if I could get results like yours.  The theory being, if they're your settings, you would think you would at least get acceptable results.

So now I've rendered out your animation a second time using the full resolution - untouched and I still get these little black bars that dance around on the water.  Just enough to ruin the clip.  I mean, if you have to be a voodoo priest to get broadcast quality animation, then it's not very useful for the masses.  And yes I get it, you guys that use it for stills love it.  But just try some animations yourself, you'll see what I mean.

So I don't know what to say now.  If I can't get good results with your settings, I feel like I just wasted my money.  I was guessing that you use the Vue plugin for Maya and render in Maya. 

Can I come to your studio for an afternoon to see how the master does it?  You're just a hop, skip and an ocean away.  (just kidding)

Thanks for the tips anyway.  Anybody want to buy a slightly used copy of Vue?

Did you even read what Phoul had written? He resized the animation as this is a common method for fast AA, so its not a settings but a resizing method. I guess most people here do that, even the still renderers.

You said you rendered the animation again (why did you render it again when you already got it)),  now resize it and look at the results? Did you really never resize animations or pictures? You can do that with about every graphics prohgram. Your Video editing software should also allow you to do that.

Also if you expected to render in maya from any other version then XStream, you obviously haven't read the program specifications, I'd also recommend at least reding these before you decide for a version. Complaining about that is a bit like "Hey, the piano doesnt fit in the trunk of my Ford Mustang, damn Ford are such crappy cars."

And i don't know Phoul personally, but i highly doubt he's a "voodoo priest". And I dont know what you are expecting by visiting his "studio" (if he has one). But don't expect to have him some enourmous mystical machines that magically turn crap into gold.

I had made several animations back with Vue 4, nothing really worth mentioning, just short fly though of my scenes. Really crap compared to what ILM or Michael Wagner did and dozens of other Vue artists. Did you take a look at the cornucopia animation Galleries? There are some private persons that did phantastic animations, even without calling themselves "studio".

At the moment i lack the time to spend much processing time for animations, my queue is full with lame stills of my upcoming product series. But if these are finished I'll be glad to make a short sample animation and you bet it will be without black bars, blurring or whatever.

In the meanwhile I'd suggest you just post these "awefull" results so we can take a look at what you did, maybe that would help understanding your problems, maybe even see at a glance what you did wrong.

If you still want to sell your vue - just go on. It cant be any easier than with vue. If you bought it to get one click broadcast animations from demo scenes, then you might have missed something.

Post your animations and we will for sure try helping you. For just generally ranting against vue animations i guess this forum might not be the perfect audience.

Hey Phoul.  True, he might not want to give away all his secrets, I certainly understand that.  But this isn't a matter of just tweaking or AA, this is a problem with the software, as far as animation is concerned.

Just render out five or ten frames and scrub through them.  You'll see what I mean.  You would have to blur the scene beyond recognition to get rid of what I'm talking about.

And somebody give haegerst a cookie, his blood sugar is getting low.

What more can be said? This was an issue already raised with Vue5, based on Phoul's demo reel for Vue5. Since then, IML used Vue to render some environments for their films, Pendulum Studio usd Vue to create the beginning of a game intro, and certainly more modests projects ( see Solomon Jagwe) that we haven't heard of. Do all these animated shots show artifacts or black spots? No.

Has anyone with actual animation experience and is willing to share some details tried rendering out in passes, then mastering the shot in a compositing program like combustion or AE?

I saw where Pendulum Studio does a final composite in AE, but it didn't say if they use passes from Vue or the whole clip.  Pendulum also said we can get "95% of the feel we want in vue."  So I can only guess that the final 5% means compositing?

And guys, I can go read vue's website and brochures, so that's not really help.  But thank you anyway.

I can't live on water either.  I have a shot at doing some matte painting for a small production company, but so far I can't even show them a sample.  So I'm really trying to get to the bottom of this and get some results.  If I've seemed cross, it's because I'm on a strict time line.

In vue's manual, they address "the dreaded flickering that is so typical
of computer graphics animations." 

Those are their words, so I know it's not just me.

Of course, flickering exists, but Vue can take care of it now better than before, and lots of AA and frame postwork ( resizing, for example) can take you there.

Yes, I think I read that in a brochure.  Or was it there web site?  Anyway ... thanks.