Nearly Done

Posted on September 4, 2014 by SusanG

The rendering is nearly done. I should be compiling the images into a video in the next couple of days and then I will post the final product for you all to see.

As I was watching some of the frames render I noticed some stats (statistics) about the scene which some of you may find interesting. There are 3 lights, 2 are ray traced and 1 is shadow mapped. There are 53 objects in the scene and a total of 123846 faces. If there was something else you wanted to know about it, send me an email and I’ll see if I can find that information.

In preparation for compiling the final video, I downloaded the Adobe Creative Cloud copy of Premiere. Well, it said it was for creating videos. I messed with it a bit and found that when I dropped images in I didn’t quite understand how to make sure the time slider understood that one image was one frame and it shouldn’t hold that frame/image for a certain number of seconds. Yes, I will likely want to figure this out at some point. I may want to use the program for something.

However, every tutorial I have watched and most articles I have read, talk about using After Effects. I didn’t choose it first because the Adobe description indicates it is just for creating visual effects. I tried it anyway and it behaves just as I was hoping. I did a little test with some of the already rendered images and it looks like it will be running at 30 frames per second. Which makes my 300 frame animation about 10 seconds long.

After Effects was much easier to use and it behaved as expected so that will be what I will be using to compile this project into video. As soon as the last frames are rendered.

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The Joys of Rendering

Posted on September 1, 2014 by SusanG

Rendering an animation is a time consuming process. It is also a computing resource consuming process. When I started rendering the frames for this project I found that just opening a browser page could be slow. And these renders aren’t fast.

I found that the time it takes a single frame to render is between 17 and 19 minutes. I am rendering at 800 x 600 and sampling each pixel twice. I am rendering only the single full pass, nothing extra like an ambient occlusion pass or subsurface scattering or what not.

I had originally estimated that each frame might take 20 minutes to render. For 300 frames at 20 minutes that was 6000 minutes. Doing the rest of the math, my original estimate was that it would take 4 days and 4 hours to render. Fortunately, each frame is not taking 20 minutes to render and it looks like the render time will be a little less than 4 days.

One of the things that I have noticed is that when I am rendering from 3ds it seems that my graphics card is pulling a little more power than it usually does. I saw an interesting spike in my power bill last month when I started creating prettier renders of my daily work. With this in mind and the amount of time it just this short scene is going to take to render, I decided I should look into render farms.

I found a couple that look like they might fit within my current budget. There are surprising number of render farms out there. This is good because I have a couple of other projects in mind that will likely be more than 300 frames. When I get to those I’ll have to do more research on that and I’ll let you know what I end up with.

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Ready to Render

Posted on August 29, 2014 by SusanG

Everything I want is modeled. I added a camera. Time to animate and render.

I started out thinking I would bring the camera in from the left side and curve it around and then move up to the table as sort of zoom in and then look out the window. The first thing I had to figure out or remember was how to set a key frame since I didn’t want to use Auto key. Once I had that addressed I started moving the camera and setting my keys.

The default timeline for animating is 100 frames. I tried setting the animation up in 100 frames and it went so fast it made me nauseous. That was not going to work. I thought that standard movie frame rates for U.S. were 24 frames per second so when I did the calculation 100 frames is just over 4 seconds. That’s hardly enough time to see things. I decided to try 300 frames which at 24 frames per second is about 12.5 seconds.

Even at 300 frames the path of the camera didn’t work out well.

So I started over setting the key frames and instead decided to just move the camera in from the back of the room up close to the table and then a bit of a look out the window. This was much better and with less turning of the camera there was less of a feel of riding a roller coaster.

Time to start rendering. Meaning of the tutorials I have watched discuss the rendering options with regards to file output. You can render all frames straight through and output as a movie file. This means your computer is on and running for as long as it takes, or until power goes out or the program crashes. Both failures would then require starting again from the beginning. The other option is to output as individual image files and compile those into a video in a different program. The advantage is that you can render just a few files at a time and if your system loses power or crashes you can pick up at the last completed frame. There is a lot more control over the use of your computer resources this way.

I’ve chosen to go with the render a frame at a time option and once it’s complete I will then compile everything into a video file from there.

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Finishing Touches

Posted on August 26, 2014 by SusanG

Almost done. Well, for as far as I want to take this scene. I could, as is always the case, continue to add many more objects and components, but where to end it. I think this is enough for now. I do really need one more object to finish it off. The candle.

Now that I have the candle stick holder to my liking, this has given me some issues along the way, I need to put a candle in it. I used a cylinder primitive to model from. Some edge loops and soft selection tool to get it just right. I even added a wick, though I don’t think you can see it very well. For that I also used a cylinder. I had to scale it way down and then use the rotation tool to bend it a few sections at a time, and then move them back into place. I could have used part of a torus, but where’s the fun in that.

BeautyRender_0810_02

I wanted a wax material for the candle but I didn’t find a pre-made one in my library so I chose a red plastic. I dropped an omni-light in a flame shaped object that I gave a transparent and self illuminating material. That way it makes the flame look like it is lit.

 

 

CameraView_0812_02

And now it’s time to add a camera. I added a single camera with a 50mm lens for rendering through. This gives me better control over the field of view.

The next step is to layout how I want the camera to move in the scene.

More fun and games to come.

 

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Need Another Chair

Posted on August 23, 2014 by SusanG

One chair just won’t do for this scene since there are two place settings so I need a second chair. I could copy the one I have and use that and be done with that. Of course, you know that is not going to happen.

So a second chair must be modeled. I wanted it different from the other one so I chose to do something based on, but not exactly like, one of my own dining chairs. Incidentally, the round or hoop back chair is similar to a chair I once owned.

Back to the second chair.

I decided to do something with more of an overall square shape instead of the round. You would think it would be much easier and go much smoother in the modeling, and while for the most part it did, I still ran into a few issues. The need for edge loops to maintain the shape and the harder edges was even more important. And I found trying to get the legs and the seat to fit just right was a bit awkward. I had tried to model the seat base and cushion from one primitive and that did not really work out when it came time to notch out the seat to accommodate the legs. SqrChair_0806_01

As you can see I decided that the cushion and the seat base should be modeled from separate primitives. This really worked out better as I was better able to fit the cushion onto the seat and in between the back risers.

 

SqrChair_0810_01

I found a nice cloth material for the seat cushion and used that so it adds some interest to the scene as well.

 

 

 

 

I think the two contrasting chair styles are fun. Chairs_0810_01

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