Avoid flickr

[Viktim]

Hi

Im trying to do a animation, but the light changes in the frames between. I really dont want to increase the render settings to much because the whole animation is 600frame long and it would take ages to render it.

Render settings:

Res: 1280x720
Detail: 0.45
AA: 5
GI: 2/1
Ray trace: On

Current render time per frame: 4minutes

[Oshyan]

Sample frames/animation to show the problem? Detail that low can cause problems, but of course is giving you your fast render times. GI 1/2 will be more stable than 2/1, assuming you mean that GI Relative Detail is 2 in your example and Sample Quality is 1. You want the reverse ratio. GI is probably the source of at least part of your flicker problem. Also when you say Ray Trace On do you mean Raytraced Objects or Raytraced Shadows in Clouds/Atmosphere? See this recent thread for some similar discussion:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=9852.0

- Oshyan

[Viktim]

Hi

Here you have 6 frames with the above render settings. And yes i meant Ray traced objects.

http://www.2shared.com/file/ytcrRG3k/Animation6.html

[Oshyan]

Those appear to be detail-related or Displacement/Detail Blending issues. Increasing any of those settings might help.

There are also some known issues which may be at play here, which are being worked on by the dev team right now. If you can supply your file I can test it in the latest alpha to see if the problem is at all addressed by the fixes we've implemented. It would be good to have another test file anyway, if you don't mind.

You can email to support AT planetside.co.uk

- Oshyan

[Viktim]

The .tgd file is already attached on the above post:)

[Oshyan]

Oh, thanks. I tend to miss it when people just post it! Hehe. I'll take a look.

- Oshyan

[Viktim]

Guys Guys!(imagine Cartman from south park)

Terragen is pissing me of atm! i have increased the render settings and still!!!! still the flickr is HUGE!

Render settings:

Detail: 0.6
AA: 5
GI relative: 1
GI sample: 3
Blur: 3
Ray trace objects: On

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI5lQADLs6c

Anyone have any idea of what i should do to get rid of the flickr?

[Tangled-Universe]

Looking briefly at your previously posted tgd and the settings you've just mentioned I think you should alter at least the following parameters:

- GI 1/3 -> GI 1/5 maybe 1/6. The higher the sampling the smoother inter-frame differences.
- GI blur 3 -> 40, but perhaps even higher. This goes along with sampling. If you don't calculate GI accurate enough you need to smoothen/blur it a lot to minimze inter-frame differences. It is known that some animations need blur radius of >100.
- Atmosphere samples 16 -> ~32.
- Enable/increase detail blending: looking at your tgd you aren't using this. This is essential when making animations. Increase to at least 0.5, but probably you need it at 1 anyway. Unfortunately this will double the rendertime, but you really need this, the most of all aforementioned other improvements.

Please let us know if this helps.

Cheers,
Martin

[dandelO]

I'd switch off GI completely and render it with a multi directional sunlight setup.

If you look in your program files folder(assuming you use PC version) go to this location; 'Planetside Software' >> 'Windows' >> 'Generic'. You'll find an alternative default scene there called, I think, 'default_pre_GI.xml'. This will give you an empty scene the same as the default scene but, with a multiple sun lighting setup instead of a GI based one.
Open this .xml like you would any other TG project, copy the 3 sunlight nodes(or save as a clipfile to use again) to your animation scene then, set GI detail and GI quality both to '0'.
Try rendering a few frames that you know were problematic and check the results, I think you'll find a dramatic improvement in the lighting flicker.

As for the terrain flickering, that isn't as bad as the lighting issue but, do you have 'detail blending' set to '1' or, is it still set to the default of '0'? If it's set to 0, set it to 1. This will increase render time, though.

EDIT: Hee-hee! ^^ Hi, Martin.

[Viktim]

Tangle: Hi and thank you:) i will render about 20 frames with your settings to see if there is any improvement, be back in a moment!:)

Dandelo: Hi and thank you for the tip, i will test it right after i try tangles way:) And yes, the detail blending was set at default, 0.

[Tangled-Universe]

Tangle: Hi and thank you:) i will render about 20 frames with your settings to see if there is any improvement, be back in a moment!:)

Dandelo: Hi and thank you for the tip, i will test it right after i try tangles way:) And yes, the detail blending was set at default, 0.

A flicker-free solution is definitely a fill light setup. The disadvantage is that it often has lack of realism and especially can look pretty ugly with clouds.
If my suggestions don't give any improvement at all then you might consider using a fill light setup.

Oh by the way: if you're using clouds, you should also disable the acceleration cache then, since this also introduces problems in animations.

[Viktim]

Hi again

I just rendered about 25 frames and the result is improved 4 sure. There are some visible light changes on the mountain tho, but not even close to the previous render.

EDIT: here you have the rendered frames http://www.2shared.com/file/BsbMMISP/Animation2.html

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi again

I just rendered about 25 frames and the result is improved 4 sure. There are some visible light changes on the mountain tho, but not even close to the previous render. Any idea of what i should increase to get rid of that last flickr?

EDIT: here you have the rendered frames http://www.2shared.com/file/BsbMMISP/Animation2.html

What were the settings now?
There's still pretty obvious flicker.

[Viktim]

Its obvious bit its not catastrophic.

Render settings:

Detail: 0.6
AA: 5
GI relative: 1
GI sample: 5
Blur: 40
Ray trace objects: On

Detail blending: 0.5

Atmosphere samples: 40

[Tangled-Universe]

Ok, I'd set detail blending to 1 and blur to 200.
The blur is perhaps too much/overkill, but if it works now than you can try reducing it step by step until you've reached an optimum.
You'll see that if you use a huge blur radius that you can barely speak of GI anymore, oh well