Crossroads from the 23rd century - the animation

[DocCharly65]

The first LQ animation tests of the threat https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,29573.0.html

Meanwhile the HQ version (1280x720 to be upscaled later to 1920x1080) is on it's way.
Some car movements are adjusted and some more little improvements.

We have 37 Taxis (appr. 140MB per model), and about 40 more different cars with lower memory usage.

I am proud again about Terragen, that it can handle these amounts of data!

[DocCharly65]

There was not enough space for the second mp4 upload so a second one here:

Here you can see a failure in the street corner. The asphalt is blinking. In the actual rendering I could fix this but I needed the complete weekend to find the mistake:
The original street corner had TWO plates overlapping. That a often appearing mistake resulting in flickering of mosel faces when you make closeups or move the camera in some angles.

[Hannes]

Wow!!!! This is so amazing! So much stuff going on! A terrible good job!!!
Did you animate Rosy? I think she wasn't rigged as far as I know.

[DocCharly65]

Thanks Hannes

Many of the renderpeople's stuff is only posed. But I guess that wouldn't be a big obstacle for you (as it isn't for me)
Yes, I rigged Rosy a time ago but only what was easily to do. I animated a slight head movement and hip rotation.

You'll see her later more often in her red dress on the Enterprise bridge (doing the exactly same movements   )

[Hannes]

You'll see her later more often in her red dress on the Enterprise bridge (doing the exactly same movements   )

Good to hear!



Thanks for the explanation, Nils!!

[Dune]

Wow, that is so cool! The runners are great (and so is Rosy... nice dress). But I wouldn't have noticed the blinking asphalt, could well be light/shadow plays from overhead vehicles.

[DocCharly65]

Thanks

Unfortunately I already deleted the failed attempt in HQ (1280x720 px AA8 )
There you would have noticed it. But anyway all renders quite fast.
I also had in my back of my brain to try PT but I am stuck to TG version 4.4.67. I guess that was a version with some not yet fixed bugs. E.g. glass did not have any reflection:



But I liked that look of light and shadow so much that I tried something really weird:
I let TG calculate the GI cache WITH PT and then rendered the animation with RT.

Here the comparison:

GI cache with RT:
The cars get much too bright left side. And on the left side there's no light source




GI cache with PT:



Still no comparison as PT but with quite fast rendertime a better result.


One day I'll have to upgrade my TG version but I am not sure at the moment if I'd not better wait untill I have finished some open render jobs. So far I had the experience that after upgrading TG the light settings did not fit any more to the ready rendered frames. That ment to start thr render jobs from the beginning.

The other thing is when I looked in the shop these days I saw (mostly of course positive) changes. Especially the overview of versions etc. is much better. Thanks Matt
But I also saw that the 5 additional render licenses are not included in the subscription. So I would need to choose the full purchase version. So perhaps if my boss spends a christmas gratification ... or later if another of my PCs dies... They are up to 7 years old now and almost run 7/24/365 since then (Brave little tin boxes! ).

[Dune]

Apparently that trick works. Have to try that as well. Calculating GI with PT is pretty fast, so if you then get the darks like in PT with RT, wow, great!

[DocCharly65]

Good luck, Ulco

Perhaps you need to adjust the tonemap to a bit higher gamma, AFTER calculating the PT GI cache. In my tests the first trys were going to the right direction but too dark.

Another thing I meanwhile do very often is to deactivate self-illuminated shaders before GI caching. The result is not physically corect but sometimes the ambient illumination looks totally wrong if I don't.

[Dune]

Thanks, Nils.

[DocCharly65]

OK -- we've got it for the moment.
The 23rd century city is animated and on YT:

I had to render the closeup of Quarks bar 3 times for a layer without DoF because the bulding got moving lines when I used DoF. Without - no problem. 
Unfortunately I see this phenomenon almost on every model  of evry quality level... But if my workaround renders so fast, I can live with it.



Have fun...
And now ... now i'm going to retire for big things (or just unbelievable nonsense).  

[WAS]

Wow, that's awesome! I just recently got a Quark's Bar t-shirt that I absolutely love.

It's similar to this one: https://www.hottopic.com/product/star-trek-deep-space-9-quarks-bar-t-shirt/15076935.html

But it came in green and the logo was bigger. It's been already removed from Amazon. Probably because of this licensed Hot Topic one.

[Dune]

  BIG SMILE! This is a great part again, I love that music with it. Soooo funny. It's really like it's all a big happy future family.

Don't you need an accident of sorts? It seems like a rather unworkable mobility situation, even worse then with everyone 'safely' on ground. Though you spread the number of vehicles over more space of course.