Use of shadow once options through Rama

[GeordieJames]

Hello Team EIAS3D

You may think this request is a retrograde step but its one that I wanted to flag up.

Back in EI something or other (a while ago now) you could set up Phong Buffer shadow lights and click 'calculate once'. When you then rendered an animation through Renderama it would calculate that shadow for the first frame and then re-use the data for subsequent frames. Useless for scenes with moving objects but for architectural flybys it was very useful as you could crank up the definition of the shadowing but only get the render time hit once.

At some point this feature was broken. In the current set up if you set a buffer shadow and calculate once, renderama does not re-use the same file, rather calculates the buffer for each frame - thus slowing things down.

I have a large project that is too big (7.1 million polys) to use GI lighting on as it is cripplingly slow to render. So I am using an illuminator dome to mimic the effect. I want to set this to buffer shadows so it is a soft light/shadow rather than hard edged raytrace but to set one frame to render takes EI 6 minutes (on a Dual Core Intel 2.66), it then renders quickly. If I were to set an animation of 100 frames the setup would take 600 minutes - which is not workable.

Setting the illuminator to raytrace enables the frame to be set quickly but to get a soft edge I have the render hit at the other end.

Can anything be done about this ?

James

ps. I think the calculate once feature was broken when Renderama started sending renamed model and texture files, as oppose to the old days where it would use the same named files as used in creation.

[GeordieJames]

just me then....

fair enough, I just need a faster machine :-)

James

[Igors]

Hello James, All

We realize it's a reasonable request, but its eventual implemention is not near easy. The details are:

- as you know, buffer shadow is a (simplified) render pass that should be written in ccn file.

- for a local render the Animator writes shadow pass for first frame and a shadow file reference for all further frames, so all is fine. Note that Animator also removes shadow file(s) before render starts.

- in network render every frame (or strip) is written in separated ccn to be distributed over network in any order. Slave Cameras could not know either given frame first or last, it's just "render job" for them. Thus shadow pass(es) should be written in any ccn and should be processed by slave Cameras anytime. Also it's unclear how to check existed shadow file consistence and how to avoid numerous obsolete files on slave's side.

All that does not mean "impossible", IMO it can be added for UserPack voting, we just explained why it's a solid portion of work.

[GeordieJames]

Thank you Igors, your explanation is appreciated and I can see its not a simple thing to implement.

James

[RichardJoly]

just me then....

fair enough, I just need a faster machine :-)

3 days without an answer... Sorry James, that's my bad. It's not Igors job to scan the Forum and keep contact with the users. Of course it always pleases them to give information but I should have acknowledge before that. We are constantly scanning the Forum from a variety of hardware and this 24 hours a day as we live in many time zones. No friend should be left alone in the dark... Please accept my apologies.

[Igors]

Hello Richard, James, All

Sure, a fast reply is always wanted/better. But not everyhing can be answered quickly. It was better for us first to check how it works and where is the prob. We remember this request from Daniel (2007) and from Jens (2009). Hmm... "The life is a long song" :rolleyes: