animation flicker

mt_sabao · March 20, 2009, 12:39:46 PM

Hei everybody,
Was giving my first go at animation with my pluto scene (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5784.0) but please have a look here:

I have quite some flickering. the settings i'm using are detail 0.7, AA 4, GI (2,2,8). Everything else is default. What you guys recommend for a smoother animation?
Thanks in advance!
Luis

Mohawk20 · March 20, 2009, 12:50:19 PM

Well, the problem is that the GI is calculated differently for every frame, so shadows are lighter in some frames, and darker in others.
It's a common problem, and they are trying to fix this.

In the mean time, they gave us something that might work sometimes.
Here it is: Increase the GI Blur Radius (which you now have set to the default '8'). You might need to increase it dramatically to see the best results, but since it also has effect on the render times, you might want to start carefully.

If you do a search on the forums for GI Blur Radius, you might find more detailed information...

mt_sabao · March 20, 2009, 12:54:14 PM

thanks for the prompt answer!
So this is basically the GI causing this? Meaning if I bump the Detail or AA more wouldn't make much difference? So I should just mess around with the blur radius. And when you say dramatically, do you mean one order of magnitude, 2, 3?
Thanks once again. In the mean time i'm searching the forum for more clues...

cyphyr · March 20, 2009, 01:06:01 PM

In this case it looks like a GI issue and moving the GI blur radius up from 8 should help. I generally go for about 800 and it has no impact on render time.

There's another setting that might be useful to test, Detail Blending under the Render>Extra. The default is 0 (used to be 1) which is fine for single frames but problematic for animations. Try moving it up to 1 although this will slowdown your render times considerably.

Hope this helps

richard

neuspadrin · March 20, 2009, 01:06:27 PM

oshyan suggets 300-500
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5782.msg60833#msg60833

and in this thread:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5271.0
big ben says he uses 800.

mt_sabao · March 20, 2009, 01:22:18 PM

yeah, just tried 64 because e didn't know what dramatically meant, but know 64 didn't do anything. Will try 800 like you guys suggested.
Thanks!

Mohawk20 · March 20, 2009, 06:53:02 PM

Sorry for leaving out the details, but I didn't have time to check. Glad I could give you a jump-start though.
And I confused the Blur Radius and Detail Blending in affecting render times.
But that's why there are so many of us right?

Oshyan · March 21, 2009, 12:37:32 AM

When rendering, it's a good idea to have Detail Blending at 1, though it is not for GI specifically but for other details of the scene. For GI issues like this one, as stated, a higher GI Blur Radius is a good idea. 300-500, even 800 (though I don't now how much different the effect is at those higher settings, and there may be detail loss in the lighting at that point). Another setting you can fiddle with is the Sample Quality. If you increase that, separate from GI Relative Detail, you can often improve things. For example a setting of GI Relative Detail 1, Sample Quality 3 or 4, and GI Blur Radius 500 might give good results.

- Oshyan

Mr_Lamppost · March 23, 2009, 06:32:48 PM

There is always the old fall back of turning of GI altogether and using fill lights.

axiohelp1 · March 28, 2009, 05:22:38 AM

Hi
I have one problem.
The created file in Terragen 2 cannot see Terranim (the file has other expansion)
Terragen 2 - *.tgd
terranim - *.ter

How to me to correct it?

neuspadrin · March 28, 2009, 10:05:59 AM

In your node view, you can right click the height field generate (I'm assuming you generated terrain as you don't have a .ter loaded in), and then click save file as. Automatically should already be set to save it as a .ter, which you can then load into terranim.