supernovavfx Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 my newest contract client wants me to create a poster.... its all coming together nicely but when i add palm trees and more... the shadows appear SUPER BLOCKY and lacking any nuance or detail... I have read all about the different settings I can change and have tried a bunch but not gotten much closer. The poster is huge.... 27 inches by 40 'roughly 6000 x 9000 pixels... I've increased the buffer size but i have no frame of reference... I do 99% HD video and animation... something this high in resolution is new to me. Test renders take 10 to 20 to 30 minutes so I am hoping someones feedback can save me the hours and hours of tests I'm failing at so far :) ray traced shadows intrigue me but appear to require lots of trial and error i dont have time for on THIS project anyway... so many GREAT EI print artists out there... your input on high quality buffer shadow settings would be VERY APPRECIATED! Thanks... i am trying to attach an image Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 18, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 here is one palm tree Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S. Houtzager Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 Never seen that kinda shadow Scott. Maybe the ground is causing it. I would just break it down and test one thing at a time. You will need to post the file to get the best advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 18, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 here is ray traced but its super hard edged.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas Egger Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 Ola Scott, Please, Could you show us your Shadow settings? Thanks Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 18, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 If i can soften up the ray traced shadows just a 'bit' i think i may go with those... they seem really accurate... a "bit" harsh... but graphically accurate and not bad looking... just not soft. here is the buffer setting of just the ONE light the background is simply a photoshop illustration of grass and sand... on an uber shape I'm only allowed 13.4 k to upload imagery???? can someone loosen up my "restrictions" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas Egger Posted August 18, 2014 Report Share Posted August 18, 2014 Ola Scott! Please, do a screen grab of your Light settings, like this... Use a Parallel light, turn on Soft Edge Shadow, play with Light Angle and number of Samples. You can turn on and off “Use GI Sampling Engine to see the quality of the shadow vs render time. Thanks Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buggsy Posted August 19, 2014 Report Share Posted August 19, 2014 I use the 'Soft Edge' function all the time in my architectural work. I would first do a rendering with 'Raytraced' shadow with 'Soft Edge' turned off then turn on 'Soft Edge' and dial up the 'Light Angle' to say .2 then 2 then 20 so you get an exponential change in the shadow blur. Once you have these four images you can then pick a range that lies in between them to derive the optimal amount of blur. 'Samples' typically range from 1 to 12. When you use 'Use GI Sampling Engine' it will typically render much faster depending on your GI 'Sampling Area' settings under 'Global Illumination' settings. The higher the value, say 12, the smoother the blur. The lower the setting, say 3, the blur on the edge of the shadow will start to look noisy. The idea is that the shadow becomes more blurred the further from the shadow source like what happens in real life. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 19, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 19, 2014 that really helps me have an area i can start with mike... I can't seem to get the 'use GI sampling Engine' to be an active box i can check Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 19, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 19, 2014 i was using a radial light... and your settings seem to be giving me more of what I'm looking for.... thank you... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buggsy Posted August 19, 2014 Report Share Posted August 19, 2014 'GI Sampling Engine' will be greyed out if you don't have 'Global Illumination' enabled or if you don't have the 'Soft Edge' radio check box checked. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 19, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 19, 2014 I'm ALMOST there.... thanks Michael... that was easy... I'm surprised I've never used or needed GI before... but like all great things there seems to be a catch!! your directions really helped me find a great 'look' pretty fast.... BUT :( when I go to render it at even 3.4ths resolution I get NOT ENOUGH MEMORY both with the 64 bit camera and the 32 bit one. I have 32 gigs of ram.... is there a way to get around that by sacrificing a setting i might not be aware of? this is a 27 by 40 inch poster for print... so its about 6000 x 9000 pixels ideally.... its run out of memory attempting just 3\4ths of that... i 'think' it rendered half resolution ok... so it DID work for me and look great... just maybe outside of EI's capabilities? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas Egger Posted August 19, 2014 Report Share Posted August 19, 2014 Ola Scott, You need to render using "tile" render, several slices of the same image. Thanks Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 19, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 19, 2014 So far I was able to get it to render by lowering the raytrace recursion from 10 to 5. Im not sure I know what you mean or how to "tile" render this... but ill see if i can find it in the manual. getting it to work was most important. I have to be done with this poster today so that matters.... THANK YOU ALL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buggsy Posted August 19, 2014 Report Share Posted August 19, 2014 Hi Scott, I did a pdf search of the Animator Manual also but I couldn't find the term 'tile' as a rendering function. It could be a technical term we're not familiar with. By tile render I think Tom may mean that you increase the 'Frame Strip Total' under the 'Network' settings in the 'Render Information' window. I often have to increase this to 20-30 total Frame Strips in order to not get any 'not enough memory' errors. I suppose it has a smaller area of pixels to render, being lighter on memory demand. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas Egger Posted August 20, 2014 Report Share Posted August 20, 2014 Ola Michael and Scott! Yes, the feature is "frame strip", which tile the render in horizontal "buckets", it allows to render bigger frames. Side note, camera always need to load the entire scene when rendering with GI enabled, no matter the amount of frame strips, since Camera need to compute all Ray traces directions of the scene. Thanks Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2014 so to do this i need too set up renderama for my "test" renderings than? LOL its been so long since I've done a poster this large 6600 wide by around 9000 tall.... I'm literally figuring this out this minute and this hour so please share anything you all know, I'm reading on this right now.... I have 3 posters to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2014 rendering in strips does NOT help. All it does is render the a few strips and error out on the complicated strips... memory error. I need advice on how to work with the GI settings to avoid the out of memory errors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2014 I'm just going to "normal" non GI ray traced shadows... speed is not as important as simply not "bombing" now I've got to figure out how to tweak THESE settings... LOL learning on the fly after 20 yrs of 3d we never stop learning... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buggsy Posted August 20, 2014 Report Share Posted August 20, 2014 Yes it would be good to know, before rendering, if some of the strips were going to cause out of memory errors! It would save the pain of rendering most of them and then having to re-rendering all of them again with a higher frame strip number. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supernovavfx Posted August 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2014 if I understand Tomas correctly... the number of strips does not matter... the total 'rays' or calculation for the entire scene needs to be done by each camera.... so 'rendering' is faster, but if the camera can not calculate the GI than its irrelevant. I said before... I'm learning a lot here... its all good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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