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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: DocCharly65 on November 16, 2018, 04:59:08 AM

Title: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 16, 2018, 04:59:08 AM
Sorry - was some days offline... had a new idea how to realize an old project.
Since Ulcos work on his herd of reindeer I have a new weird dream: I want to animate a stampede in my film.

The first step is to practice a little with small animated animal populations. So I unpacked and modified my old Safari TGDs. The animation render jobs are already running.

Unfortunately I have to shock all vegetarians and vegans deeply: Grass HAS BONES!!! - 50 per tuft of grass ... (so that it can bend in the wind)
::) 8) :o ;) ;D

Animation still 1 (sunrise):
[attach=1]

Animation still 2 (late morning)
[attach=2]



... to be continued in the animation area :)



Before I forget:
all animals by 3DRT
all (original) plants by xFrog (some rigged and animated in blender3D)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on November 16, 2018, 05:10:59 AM
Cool!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Kadri on November 16, 2018, 07:17:21 AM

Looks great.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: luvsmuzik on November 16, 2018, 07:22:57 AM
Oh so clever! Can't wait. ;D
Love the sunrise image!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DannyG on November 16, 2018, 08:41:48 AM
Nice distributions, both versions are very well done
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 16, 2018, 11:33:54 AM
Thank you all :)

The late morning version could be almost ready when I come back from Dusseldorf on Sunday. And even the first 30 frames look promising so far.

The Sunrise will be a 500h render job (on the old i7 it would be 750  ::) ) because the usage of "receive shadows from the surfaces" and the "glowing sphere in front of the sun - technics"
Also I hope the landing stork will look ok - the animation parts didn't fit 100% so I'm curious.

All in all I hope to get a plausible though not really 100% authentic look :)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: bobbystahr on November 17, 2018, 10:32:14 AM
Can't wait, good luck on render times heh heh
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Hannes on November 17, 2018, 10:40:40 AM
Great stuff as always!!!! Can't wait!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: WAS on November 17, 2018, 09:10:37 PM
Oh how did I miss this? This is great! I think I like the sunset version the best as far as layout of the animals with the substance of the scene together.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Agura Nata on November 19, 2018, 11:14:06 AM
So wonderful my friend, looks great!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: sboerner on November 19, 2018, 05:50:36 PM
Can't wait to see this. Stills look terrific.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 20, 2018, 12:32:26 AM
Thanks to all of you :)
Some good news and some bad news:
When I came back from Dusseldorf I found one PC with a successful update of the security software and a render error in a bucket... pfff!  ::) :-[
Checking details I found out that It had stopped rendering half an hour after I left my home!  :( :( :(
In the other animation (the sunrise scene) a tree in the foreground was not looking as I wished so I adjusted some things and restarted.

But the good news: I started a 3rd animation render job...
First 11 frames give me hope it will work. Just guess what it will be  ;)  :

[attach=1]
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on November 20, 2018, 01:40:49 AM
Ah, a stampede. Nice. Who gets trampled?

So your render machine is online, pff. I thought you'd have a different offline machine for those jobs.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 20, 2018, 01:48:10 AM
Unfortunately I have not yet organized a useful control for online access. The PCs are all in a network because since I do these animations via hundreds of GB obj-sequences I share the models on a NAS for all machines to save HDD space. Works good but so all render machines are online too.

But if the problems only appear so seldom, I am too lazy to care about a complex network solution.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on November 20, 2018, 01:50:13 AM
I see. Well, I hope win 10 will keep quiet then next time  ;)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 20, 2018, 01:55:37 AM
:)
Oh yeah! between 26th and 5th of every following month I check almost every evening for Win Updates. Mostly I can intercept them in time and then update all PCs.

But not so seldom Mr. Murphy does best of his work: I check for updates - no updates availlable - I go to bed - I wake up in the morning and half an hour after going to bed all updates came and all machines show the log in screen...  :P ::)

...now I reckon always with all...  ;D ;D
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on November 20, 2018, 01:57:00 AM
They're just waiting for you to go to sleep and then grinningly to their update thing  8)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 20, 2018, 01:57:57 AM
in fact... ;D
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 20, 2018, 11:27:24 AM
While waiting for the render results, I'm just starting to get bored ... And you know what that means ...

I warned you!...

:)

[attach=1]


streetsigns somewhen somewhere from archive3d
Rail Road Crossing Lights by "yourTurboModeler" on Turbosquid
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on November 20, 2018, 11:44:14 AM
 ;D ;D ;D You might get bored, but with you around, I won't  :D
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: bobbystahr on November 20, 2018, 11:49:44 AM
Quote from: DocCharly65 on November 20, 2018, 11:27:24 AM
While waiting for the render results, I'm just starting to get bored ... And you know what that means ...

I warned you!...

:)

[attach=1]


streetsigns somewhen somewhere from archive3d
Rail Road Crossing Lights by "yourTurboModeler" on Turbosquid


What Dune said and LOL at Crazy Cattle Crossing...
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Jo Kariboo on November 20, 2018, 05:33:07 PM
Very well executed and your humour is excellent!  :D
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Hannes on November 22, 2018, 07:51:57 AM
 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D I love this!!!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: mhaze on November 22, 2018, 08:06:34 AM
Brilliant
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 22, 2018, 08:52:31 AM
Thanks :)

Just to share my happiness about first not so bad impressions of the animation I have already started the thread:

https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,25986.msg258097.html#msg258097 (https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,25986.msg258097.html#msg258097)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: cocateho26 on November 23, 2018, 05:42:09 PM
Quote from: DocCharly65 on November 20, 2018, 11:27:24 AM
While waiting for the render results, I'm just starting to get bored ... And you know what that means ...

I warned you!...

:)

[attach=1]


streetsigns somewhen somewhere from archive3d
Rail Road Crossing Lights by "yourTurboModeler" on Turbosquid

Finally, the Lion King/Starwars crossover we've all been waiting for! Lets be honest though, Rafiki would be awesome with a light saber.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 24, 2018, 03:17:50 AM
Thanks cocateho ;)
... oh you can't imagine what happened when I was in the 3DRT webpage yesterday when they had their Black Friday sale... ;)
... and what is planned next...
Every madness can be increased  :o 8) ::)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 28, 2018, 02:00:41 AM
Another little addition which is already at the state of rendering the animation:
A little cockroach runing on the traffic lights. Cockroach again from 3DRT.
I also changed some details of the traffic lights because the former settings didn't work for this close up.
I recolored a bumpmap of my "Riddicks Viper" -lights to get a more detailed illumination mask in CorelPaint.

[attach=1]
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on November 28, 2018, 04:08:40 AM
This detail is very realistic! Nice metal shaders too. Will such a small cockroach be visible in a movie, with all movements and such? I hope so.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 28, 2018, 04:53:40 AM
Thanks Ulco :)

In fact I had the same doubts when I had the cockroach idea - so this time I did a short first "RAW-Test"
And the little cockroach is even visible in this low Quality :)

Sorry for showing this here and not in the animation area but I did not want to take it out of context.

[attachmini=1]
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on November 28, 2018, 05:37:23 AM
Oh yeah, great! Thanks Nils.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: archonforest on November 28, 2018, 07:16:35 AM
Very cool!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Hannes on November 28, 2018, 07:18:48 AM
Stunning!! There are some highlights flickering on the traffic light's glass. If you don't need the highlights, switch them off, I'd say.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on November 28, 2018, 07:28:26 AM
Thanks :)

Thanks Hannes for the suggestion :)
Setting the highlights to low values and/or to a high roughness is one of the first things I usually do using reflection shaders.
In this case I wanted to keep them because in this way the reflection looked less blunt and artificial in my tests.

One of the seldom cases where I did a bit postwork with corel.
Only some seconds work with the correction stamp in Corel and the tests look perfect so far. :)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Jo Kariboo on November 28, 2018, 08:54:16 AM
Very nice result!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Oshyan on November 28, 2018, 05:43:22 PM
Your attention to detail is insane. In a good way. :D

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Antoine on November 29, 2018, 01:18:35 AM
Really great and beautiful renders !

David
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on December 11, 2018, 06:20:49 AM
Thank you :)
.
.
.
The story now goes on ...

May I introduce the little cockroach in detail? We will call him Pete... He is the conditioning warden of the traffic lights... ;)

Here only a little still shot...
[attach=1]

...but the real story happens in the animation thread:
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,25986.msg259116.html#msg259116 (https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,25986.msg259116.html#msg259116)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on March 21, 2019, 09:03:19 AM
Only a little update for today... After a longer break for the Matrix-ideas the safari animations are rendering at full power again (except one PC that is still working on space scenes).

The sunrise closeup is the the bottleneck. a.) it is as I told a 2-3h/frame-render with the extreme atmosphere settings, b.) I added another camera angle for  another 250 frames.

The others are rendering quite fast within 0,45 - 1,15 h /frame. They have just to finish. The last animation demo I showed here was about half of all.
Ther'll be some more camera angles of the stampede and a (I hope so) funny little animal story.

Here comes one shot of an added morning scene with my new beautiful model of an African Woman by Brainlogin on Turbosquid:

[attach=1]

Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Hannes on March 21, 2019, 09:32:31 AM
Wow, cool!!!!! The lady looks excellent!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: masonspappy on March 21, 2019, 09:50:01 AM
Hey, Like that!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on March 21, 2019, 10:20:44 AM
Another beauty. Your movie will be epic!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Kadri on March 21, 2019, 10:49:58 AM

Looks great!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: bobbystahr on March 21, 2019, 10:57:13 AM
oooh she is stunning...keep on keepin' on man...y' can't rush rendering so we patiently await the movie
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: archonforest on March 22, 2019, 02:34:21 PM
Last render is awesome. Like the pov.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Oshyan on March 25, 2019, 03:32:54 PM
Probably too late now, but remember we are always happy to help people optimize render times on difficult scenes. I bet we could make it render faster. :D

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on March 26, 2019, 04:27:16 AM
Thanks Oshyan :)
In fact it's not really too late because there're still 5-7 years of ideas to render, and it's never too late to learn something :)

For my two problem kids of the safari scene I already have approx. 4-6 seconds animation from both and I think they are ok enough to not re-render them...
They have both a thick atmosphere and receive shadow on surfaces neseccarily (clouds and atmosphere) ON.
AA is set to moderate 5 and no reflections to render, so I think 2-3 h per frame was adaequat.

[attach=1]

[attach=2]


Fortunately I saw the slightly frayed look like the blurred grass in the upper picture in some real shots of sunrises and sunsets too. In motion it looks even a bit better so I had no I had no scruples to ignore the "GI + DoF combination problem"

And to take it not too much out of context one of the two animations right here on my clouddrive:
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AvEpmvBUHi6qgrdlyuteb3m9fHfW1Q (https://1drv.ms/v/s!AvEpmvBUHi6qgrdlyuteb3m9fHfW1Q)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Hannes on March 26, 2019, 05:40:34 AM
Fantastic! I love the insects. The only thing that bothers me is the static trees. Makes the background look a bit like a single image.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on March 26, 2019, 06:13:15 AM
Thanks Hannes,

Many African trees (especially acacia and some palm species) are extremely stiff and don't move in the wind.
Oshyan told my that some time ago and I was astonished when I found that confirmed in some documentary films: No movement in acacia despite quite moving grass (The movement of the elephants came about through their own participation. ;D ).

Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Hannes on March 26, 2019, 06:30:06 AM
Ah, that's interesting. Good to know.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on March 26, 2019, 06:50:45 AM
...I checked in some other youtube dokus...  ::) ???

I must have understood only partly or even wrong. It seems that all the small leaves and small branches move in fact but not bigger branches - the wood is too hard.
What I saw on TV was some acacia a bit far away and the grass quite close.

I hope I have not too many animations with acacias too close so that you should see leaves movement... though you won't  :o ::) :-\
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Oshyan on March 26, 2019, 01:50:27 PM
Animating just the leaves should not be too difficult I think, with a Mesh Displacement shader. It could still look fairly natural, whereas larger displacement of e.g. branches, etc. is much harder using procedural approaches.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Agura Nata on March 27, 2019, 11:05:07 AM
Wonderful look Doc!
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on March 28, 2019, 01:52:07 AM
thanks to all :)

Meanwhile the safari scene consists of more than 20 individual animations, which I don't really want to re-render to get animated acacia leaves (and other hardwood leaves).
So I hope you forgive me this inconsistency and imperfection...

...here another "last second addition":

The stampede will begin with a close look to only many feet and then zoom out a bit... had the idea some days ago...
You don't see much more than feet grass and dust...

[attach=1]


Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on April 02, 2019, 05:31:01 AM
Another two animations needed ;)

I did a test last weekend and saw that the transition from the sunrise to the morning mood was too fast... at least I didn't like it so I started two new animations.

The animals and the plants are the same but I used a quite nice and affordable tgd from NWDA store: The NWDA Sunset Pack. (winter cold sunset - cirrus) I immedeately loved the look of these little clouds billows.
I didn't change too much. Just modified the ground a bit for my steppe-like look added only a minimum of little hills and adjusted clouds and atmosphere to best animation settings. The back light picture got enabled "Receive shadows from surfaces" only on atmosphere to avoid the sun (elevation -1) to shine through the ground. Rnedering is fortunately still fast (approx. 30 minutes per frame with AA 7 but details only 0.3 (nothing interesting to see there :)

The animation with the sun in our back is almost the same but the sun's elevation is +1

In some day's I hope I 'll see how it looks like animated including two small flocks of birds.

sun in front:
[attach=1]

sun behind us:
[attach=2]

both animations are expected to blend into each other for quite some time... 2-3 seconds (quite long in a film)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: archonforest on April 02, 2019, 06:05:22 AM
Yes the Sunset pack looks great in your scene. Good choice! 8)
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: bobbystahr on April 02, 2019, 09:52:51 AM
still knocking it out of the park I see...this is gonna be an academy award animation and we're getting to watch it grow by increments...thanks so much Doc...keep em coming.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Oshyan on April 02, 2019, 03:36:32 PM
Looks promising. But it also looks like you are perhaps not using Defer Atmo? In which case the clouds will be subject to the 0.3 Micropoly Detail and will look a bit blocky (and may flicker as well).

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on April 03, 2019, 01:56:38 AM
A pity - you got me ;)
In fact the original tgd by FrankB was originally set to Defer Atmo OFF. I tried to compensate the blocky look by the AA 7 setting but it didn't get much smoother.

Last night I restarted both render jobs with using Defer Atmo.
Advantage:
Much better and smooth clouds especially in the distance.
Disadvantage:
Rendertimes now:
1h45min instead of 25 min on the 12-core i7 (look into the sun still incl. "Receive shadows from surfaces")
45min instead of 30 min on the 8 core i7 (sun behind us)

For increasing render speed I extremely reduced the original values for clouds quality:
aggressive acceleration and quality 0.2 (from FrankB's original settings: highest detail and quality 1.2)
With FrankB's original settings I had Rendertimes of approx. 1-2h only per bucket! I guess with these settings and using Defer Atmo I would have needed 7-8 h per frame...

Because these will be two of the last animations for the safari episode I think it's worth the effort:

The new versions:

sun in front:
[attach=1]

sun behind us:
[attach=2]



Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on April 03, 2019, 02:01:52 AM
I don't think with a (thin) cloud like that you really need defer atmo. What if you only raise quality a bit? It may also be that you need to clamp the black in one of the masks (if there are any). It looks like there's a little noise away from the clouds, and that sometimes happens when masking, or doing other strange cloud combinations.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on April 03, 2019, 02:52:59 AM
Thanks for the suggestion, Ulco.

No masks in there but I am doing one test at this moment:
It's a render sequence without defer atmo but instead: Micropoly Detail "animated" from 0.3 up to 1.2 in 10 frames, AA set to 5
(I changed the resolution to 1920x1080 but cropped to the critical area around the sun)

At the end I can determine the change of render times with the help of file info and I can see the quality in a direct comparison.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Oshyan on April 03, 2019, 08:01:38 PM
The benefit of Defer Atmo has little or nothing to do with how thick a cloud layer is. Also AA has minimal effect on sky (atmo and cloud) quality when Defer Atmo is OFF. AA *dramatically* affects sky quality (and render time) when Defer Atmo is ON. So trying to increase AA to compensate for low micropoly detail when Defer Atmo was off would not do anything really.

If you are not already using Robust Adaptive Sampling (in AA sample settings), and a higher level of adaptivity (e.g. 1/256), I would suggest you do so, especially with Defer Atmo enabled.

We can help you optimize scene render times if you need. Just email support.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: Dune on April 04, 2019, 02:07:30 AM
I found that Robust Adaptive Sampling (without any other adjustments) is much faster, but also much grainier. I guess I didn't yet grasp the benefit of it.
Title: Re: Safari
Post by: DocCharly65 on April 04, 2019, 02:41:15 AM
Thank you for the suggestions and support.
After a complete day of  experiments I found hat rendering it as is (the suggested Defer Atmo ON) is the best way.
I found that there are no time savings in setting it to OFF. To get an adaequad quality like Defer Atmo ON I had to increase Micropoly Details so high that the rendertime was the same but some rest noise still remained. If I took Oshyan's warning of possible flicker into account, my decision was probably right :)

Just  examples from yesterday:

No Defer Atmo
Micropoly Detail 0.3
AA 5
1920 x 1080 cropped to an Area of 544 x 340
Rendertime 17 minutes
[attachimg=1]

No Defer Atmo
Micropoly Detail 0.8
AA 5
1920 x 1080 cropped to an Area of 544 x 340
Rendertime 96 minutes
[attachimg=2]

Defer Atmo ON
Micropoly Detail 0.3
AA 5
Complete frame rendered (1280 x 720)
Rendertime 105 minutes
[attach=3]

I should meniton that I have the impression that rendertime is very variing, depending on the cropped area. I often had the effect that I have very huge differences in render time if I move the cropped area only some pixels... especially in my most frightening renders: in the face of sun and a dense atmosphere and "Receive shadows from surfaces" ;)


... little addition: still working on 4.1.24 because my maintenance days expired. I'd like to wait until some great updates for my personal interest (sorry may sound a bit egoistic :)  ) These were eg. grouping objects, handle lghtsources like objects and group them with objects and stuff like this. But let's see what is coming next I fully trust Matt's and Oshyan's phantasy and talent :)