Safari

Started by DocCharly65, November 16, 2018, 04:59:08 AM

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Oshyan

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

DocCharly65

#46
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

Hannes

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.

DocCharly65

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 ).


Hannes

Ah, that's interesting. Good to know.

DocCharly65

...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 ::) :-\

Oshyan

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

Agura Nata

Wonderful look Doc!
"Live and Learn!"

DocCharly65

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]



DocCharly65

#54
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)

archonforest

Yes the Sunset pack looks great in your scene. Good choice! 8)
Dell T5500 with Dual Hexa Xeon CPU 3Ghz, 32Gb ram, GTX 1080
Amiga 1200 8Mb ram, 8Gb ssd

bobbystahr

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.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Oshyan

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

DocCharly65

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]




Dune

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.