Yosemite in motion

[digitalis99]

Credit goes to Ulco for the creation of the static scene.  I just made a few parts move and then rendered it for our upcoming demo reel.  You may recall a still from this scene posted a year or two ago.

https://vimeo.com/105583919

The scene makes use of our automated GI pre-pass handling.  I averaged over 15 frames...because I could.  A GI cache was rendered for each frame.  It was nice to only have to upload ~50MB worth of scene data to submit the job.  Oh, and I submitted it from my laptop and then left on vacation.  I connected to multiple Internet connections while away and received all frames that were completed up to that point automatically.  That was pretty fun to watch.

[Kadri]

I liked that image. The animation is nice. A little more movement would be sweet.

[zaxxon]

Very interesting. Could you give us a rough idea of what the render times were for the original and then for the avg frame time on your farm, and what something like this might cost?  This example is certainly food for thought.

[digitalis99]

Very interesting. Could you give us a rough idea of what the render times were for the original and then for the avg frame time on your farm, and what something like this might cost?  This example is certainly food for thought.

Sure!  The render times per frame were around 7 hours. (!)  Oshyan mildly scolded me for not doing any optimization in advance of the render.   

I ran the whole job on high priority on our farm, which yielded a total cost of a little under $500.  It took just under 4 days to complete.  The same job at low priority would have taken 5 times longer (about 20 days), but cost about $100.  Hopefully that gives you a ballpark idea.

[TheBadger]

Those numbers don't terrify me. I don't mind the 20 days thing either! I mean, it taken me so long anyway, when I do render out some animations, whats 20 more days? Thats nothing.  plus, save a few bucks!

I saw that all of the water falls are moving. Only thing needed was some wind on the trees. I know this was a demo though not meant to be a movie. Very cool to see it.

[zaxxon]

Thanks, the pricing is fair, and very tempting.

[digitalis99]

I saw that all of the water falls are moving. Only thing needed was some wind on the trees. I know this was a demo though not meant to be a movie. Very cool to see it.

Yeah, I was thinking of a method for moving trees and plants, but didn't opt to tackle that.  I think dandelO did that a while back.  I kept the wind ripples on the water subdued to hopefully minimize the fact that the vegetation was stationary.

Of course, I'm not an artist...so you can chalk up any scene failures to that.     At the very least don't blame Ulco for them.

[Dune]

It's looking good, Ty. So the animation of the falls worked, super; it's effect is subtle but very believable. I also like the subtle water rippling. But I agree about a little more movement, perhaps in the clouds, though that wouldn't be very visible without a longer animation.

[digitalis99]

It's looking good, Ty. So the animation of the falls worked, super; it's effect is subtle but very believable. I also like the subtle water rippling. But I agree about a little more movement, perhaps in the clouds, though that wouldn't be very visible without a longer animation.

The clouds use some 4d animation, as does the fog.  It's very subtle, though, so you have to watch for it.  I did try to get the clouds themselves to move, but couldn't get that to work.  I just abandoned that effort in favor of a little 4d setting.

[Dune]

Not by inserting a transform shader after the density fractal with a little X or Z movement?

[digitalis99]

Not by inserting a transform shader after the density fractal with a little X or Z movement?

That's what I tried.  Even with extreme settings, the clouds didn't translate in X or Z.  I did see the "move clouds with textures" checkbox, and checked it.  I'm not sure how or why you would not move the clouds with textures.

[Dune]

I'm not an animation expert, but I believe 'move clouds with textures' doesn't help here. I think that's only if you want to move the whole cloudlayer up. Transforming the XYZ in a transform shader after the density fractal should work, with the move stuff cloud in the cloud settings off.

[digitalis99]

I'm not an animation expert, but I believe 'move clouds with textures' doesn't help here. I think that's only if you want to move the whole cloudlayer up. Transforming the XYZ in a transform shader after the density fractal should work, with the move stuff cloud in the cloud settings off.

I'm no animation expert, either.  I tried it both ways, but nothing I did actually moved the clouds.

[Dune]

Perhaps they are masked by a simple shape with final position checked instead of postion in terrain, don't know if that could be the trouble. I'll check my file, but not today 

[otakar]

Argh, so short! But sweet it is