Flicker in trees and clouds

Started by HoustonVFX, November 05, 2013, 02:45:43 AM

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HoustonVFX

Hi there
Here's a terragen file for an animated sequence with the camera rising out of some bamboo at dawn.
Looks good when comped in Nuke with a little colour correct, FG mist and a lens flare.
However, there is noticeable flicker on the treeline and in the clouds, which spoils the shot.
There is a low sun which I have read elsewhere can cause problems.
I have followed the advice for GI caching given online, trying both all the frames GI cached and interpolated at the default 5 frames as well as
every tenth frame cached and rendered out with a 2 frame blend. Neither make much difference to the flicker.
I have shadow maps on the three types of clouds and fairly high quality settings all round.
If anyone who has worked around this problem could have a quick look over the file to see any obvious way to reduce flicker I would be grateful.
I love the look of the stills in terragen, but have had problems with animated flicker and would love to find a workable solution.
Cheers Hugh

Dune

I can't answer your question, only know it's a hard problem, but your tgd doesn't open properly, TG hangs/crashes while opening.

HoustonVFX

Thanks for letting me know.
I know it's a bit of a pain but if you open the file in a text edit program, you need to look for the bamboo file and repath it to where your plants are stored.
I'll delete the trees and repost it as well in case someone has time to look over the cloud settings.
It would be great if Terragen let you know if/when there is a pathing problem (as Max, Nuke etc etc do) rather than just hanging...it seems a bit behind the 8 ball in this

kaedorg

Just had a quick look to your file.

tgd opens properly for me and here is the render i got.

didn't have time to check further for now

David

gregtee

Just double checking ths but you did set the path in your gi settings to read the newly created cache file?  I made that mistake once myself as it doesn't automatically set it.
Supervisor, Computer Graphics
D I G I T A L  D O M A I N

HoustonVFX

Yes I set the render to read GI cache in the two different ways I mentioned above...thx

HoustonVFX

Just opened the image above from Kaedor and it seems to be missing the bamboo leaves,
I'll post a pic of the full render but I'm really interested in settings/ideas for reducing flicker
short of blurring the hell out of the sky in Nuke

HoustonVFX

The flicker in the sky is really apparent further along the animation,
from 100 on after the camera comes out of the trees.
The bamboo on the skyline jitters like crazy too, even with high quality settings on the trees

Oshyan

TG does warn on path issues, it should not hang. I'll have a look at the files for possible resolution to the flicker issue, but posting a video example would be helpful as you've already taken the time to render the frames (presumably at sufficiently high quality that the flicker would not be due to detail compromises).

- Oshyan