Hallo! :]

 I'm nearing the end of a very long animation phase, and I'm now starting to look into the movie making part - rendering shots, editing, etc. My first movie is going to be about 3 minutes long, and will all be inside one dimly lit room with two characters dancing.

 I have a few questions that I'm hoping you folks could help with. I'll number them to make things easier.

1. First off I'll admit I know next to nothing about lighting. I was wondering if when rendering each shot, from different angles and such.. do I need to adjust the lighting every shot? Or just keep it static? I'm not looking to spend a whole lot of time with lighting.. if anyone has any suggestions for simple lighting set-ups (that still look good) for animation I'd appreciate it.

2. Does anyone have tips on  render settings for animation? I'm reaching my deadline, and while I want the quality to look very good, I also don't want to be rendering for a month.

3. I'm debating between learning the Poser hair room and having a nice head of flowing hair on my V4 character.. or saving a lot of time and using a short non-animated hairstyle. I've seen several Poser movies with short hair that's not animated that doesn't look that great.. but I'm worried about the render times and learning curve of the Poser hair room. Anyone ever deal with this problem? Or is there perhaps a poseable hair item in the store that animates easily and looks decent?

4. This it a total noob question.. but while I'm rendering an animation, am I allowed to use the computer still? For browsing the net and Word and such.

Any and all information would be much appreciated. Looking forward to any replies!

Thanks!

All very good questions and a medal for bravery to you. I'll be watching this thread with interest. All I can contribute is that I would go with transmapped hair rather than the hair room. Buy a versatile hairstyle with lots of morphs.

1. The requirements of your shot (or project) dictates your lighting choices.Your intro states a dimly lit room but your first point mentions the possibility different angles per shot. Whichever you choose, continuity and consistentcy between shots is key. You also may want to get books for lighting and cinematography.

2. Again, your projects determine your render settings. In the way that you're expecting, you can't leverage speed with quality. To produce good looking animation you'll be using different settings than you would for stills and you'll need motion blur (which take a while to calculate). Specifically, I would set minShadingRate to 1.0, bucket size to whatever your computer can handle - I would enable motoin blur and bump pixel samples up to 9, with a Gaussian filter at 3 pixels. This will give you a look similar to 35mm film.

3. Have never used the hair room (and not everyone has sucess with it) but I agree that transmapped hair that doesn't move look very good.

4. I wouldn't do anything which could potentially disrupt the delicate and finicky rendering process. A second computer - a netbook maybe?- is highly recommended.

LionheartM are you still making your movie? You didnt say how big you want your movie to be. There is a vast differance in render speed  between making it 300 x 300 pixels and 3000 x 3000. Pick a fairly small size that you can live with.   I understand that the movie takes place in a dimley lit room. Pay attention to your shadow settings. If your characters are dancing or spinning around in the room you may have shadows moving around in unpredictable and annoying ways. Are your characters throwing hard shadows onto a wall or floor? experiement with different shadow values and strengths. 3 minutes is a LOT of render time. 3 minutes at 30 frames per second is 5,400 frames! How much render time can you afford per frame?Some animators change this to 24 frames per second with no noticable loss. But if you started with 30 fps you will have to stay with it. If I may suggest, experiement  with small sections of your movie and see how it looks. Pick difficult sections with a lot of action and see what you get. I have been fooled many times by thinking that my motion looked very "Real" in my preview reneder. Only to find that it wasnt the  same when I increased to final render settings.  Say frame 50 -100 .   Then 200-250 ect. And see how your textures look and how the shadows look.  Experienment with a small number of frames for each of your different camara shots look. Animation and rendering is very time consuming be sure that it will look how you thought it would. I would suggest using maybe only 2 lights a direct overhead and maybe a spot front right and maybe a direct front left low values. And be carefull how the shadows from these lights interact with each other when your characters move or your camara moves. I would avoid Global illumination or ambient occlusion. unless you are sure how it will look and render and you have extra render time.    GOOD LUCK! and please post your movie for us to see.

I make all my movies at 640x360 as that is standard YouTube size and looks good even enlarged. I also try to keep my render times down to a frame every minute or two. Once you get beyond that, it just takes too long to render out an animation. Keep in mind, 3 minutes of animation is 180 seconds at 30 frames a second equals 5,400 frames. That's 90 hours of render time at 1 frame a minute, if I did the math correctly.

I'm currently working on an animation that uses dynamic cloth, depth of field, motion blur, and a whole lot of reflective surfaces and that is taking way too long to render out! Sometime 10-15 minutes per frame.

If you want to make hair move without going into the hair room, you can buy hair with movement morphs; convert it to "cloth" and constrain part of it to the scalp; or use magnets to move the hair. I've used all three methods with decent results, just takes some practice.

You will be able to do other things while your computer is rendering. And if you have Pro7, I think you can even do other things in Poser. But remember, whatever you're doing will slow down the render process.

Oh, and if you don't already have something that lets you set up batch renders in Poser, get one. I use batchgen (http://poserutils.tripod.com/batchgen.html). It's only $5 and well worth it! This way you can set up a whole string of poser files to render out as frames and leave it while you live your life. :)