Simon Edmondson

Here are two VGA convewrsions from the original UHD files ( they were too big to post ). They both come from the same chor, using the same models. The only difference is that one used AO as part of the render set up, the other didn't. This is the one from the render using AO Notice the flickering from about 4 seconds in ( Scene one after the intro, and then throughout ) AO.mov This is the one without AO, notice that there is no flickering in the shadows. Non AO VGA.mov The flickering results from the AO renders inserting 'strange' shadows into the scene, sometimes on the walls, others on the worktop. The AO renders were taking up to 10 hours per frame to render so they were going through unnoticed, while I got on with something else. When I did notice, I'd stop it and redo and, very frustratingly, it would not repeat. There are few things more irritating than an intermittent problem. The frames rendered without AO took about 10 mins or so, and had no rogue shadows. I have no real idea why that might happen? My brother suggested a memory leak (?) Rendered in V18 under OSX 10.11.4 on an Imac with 8Gb RAM and OSX 10.10 on a Mac mini with 4Gb of RAM. Both machines used multiple master to do four renders each. I probably need to have another go at getting network render to work. simon

RS3D Thanks for the feedback. Nor sure what the problem with the line test was, it worked fine at this end. Hoping to get the rest done in the next 10-14 days. regards simon

Thank you Tom Its been a bit more exasperating than expected, but getting there slowly. regards simon

Started a project to test a working process. The narrative premise is a bit corny but, it was the working process I wanted to find out about.The basic idea is that the ingredients of a cake mix, indulge in a dance off before jumping in the bowl ready for mixing. What I wanted to do was to animate and render it in AM, but then work over the top in TVpaint so it looked hand drawn, in a cg setting, so as to get a mix of visual styles in the same piece of work. I've encountered some problems along the way but will cover them later. This was the first test, hand drawn, no references. decided it changed volume too much so needed to use AM to avoid that, Line Test 001.mov This was the second test Animated in AM, then roto'd in TVP Sack Test 001.mov Different style of move using the 'Butter model' Butter A.mov That was then redone in a 'stage' setting trying to get the shadows on the work surfaces and walls, and the reflections in the mixing bowl Butter B.mov Made a bigger set, with lots of kitchen type fittings and tried to set up a simple lighting using only one light but with possible AO to be added later. Setup a series of actions to use on the background 'characters' while the other solo'd. Actions Test.mov Then animated the solo's and worked out some camera moves to get some variety. Shaded Mix 001.mov The moves were animated at 25fps and rendered out on two's for the roto work, (not even I am daft enough to try drawing it at 25fps). When it came to rendering it out properly I encountered a lot of trouble which Robert very kindly helped me with. I'll explain those more fully later. Part of it stemmed from rendering at UHD ( 3840 x 2160 ), which was chosen because I thought it would help with the drawing process post rendering, and because a lot of festivals prefer UHD with their applications. This probably won't get into a festival but hope the one its leading up to will. Still have 20 seconds of animation to go, hoping to get most of that done in the next two weeks. Any feedback greatly appreciated. simon PS the soundtrack comes from Appleloops

Mark Thank you for your reply. I think the render times are down to the reflections and the size of resolution, UHD. Initially it was only one light source and shadow maps but, I was getting shadows that were too dark under wall cupboards, so turned on AO. Thats when the times stretched to 7-11 hours, on current scenes.. Does allow me to get on with other things though. Next up, testing Robert's solution for reducing the time to minutes ! regards simon

Robert, Mark Thank you both for your replies. Beyond basic number watching my tech abilities are very limited.Slightly ironic in that the rest of my family are ardent techies. The Imac is 3.1Ghz with *Gb of RAM, running an i5 processor. The Mini is an i7, 2.3ghz with 4gb of RAM. The render speed seems to vary with the camera angle, even though the scene and all within it stay the same. The Imac is faster one one angle and slower on the other. I tried it on an i5 mini but that wasn't happy at all. I moved over to Macs about 12 years ago because the last three PC's had all given such a large amount of trouble and proved very unreliable. Don't wish to start a flame war,but that has not really been the case since the shift. I'm reluctant to get a PC because I don't want to make things too complex with different platforms and OS's. Its just the render times I'd like to improve. Robert has developed a way to do that so I will try them next week. when the current renders go through. Thank you. regards simon PS I have noticed a very big difference in the render times of V17 and V18 with the same chor. Can't quantify it at the moment but, previously it had seemed to be at least 30% faster.

Mark Have you noticed a big change in render times using 64 bit AM ? Apologies if that sounds nieve. I'm having long times on the scenes presently underway, working on my Imac and Mac mini. I'm typing this on a PC laptop and wondered if it was worth getting a subscription for this and using it to run 64bit and nothing else ? Regards Simon

Robert Thank you very much indeed for your help, much appreciated. Could you please send me the details of the changes and how to apply them and I'll try them out? On a related theme. I was checking them last night and found another 'mis -render'. Stopped it on render pass 2, of 3, and redid it. No error second time around. Its a bit frustrating. More positively, started rendering on two's as thats how they will be used in the drawings ( should have done that earlier ). regards simon

What I did is to edit the lighting to not take so much time. IS IT THE APPEARANCE YOU WANT? If it is I can show you how to set this up. If it isn't what you want yet, I can modify it some more. Robert Thank you again. The lighting and the shadows look fine, I will have to look more closely tomorrow when the current render finishes and the memory becomes available. The biggest difference appears to be the lack of reflections in the mixing bowl and of the casserole pot on the glass top surface of the cooker.. The cooker is less important but the mixing bowl is quite important in the overall scheme. regards simon

Mat I too used TVpaint on the Amiga, much preferred it to Deluxe Paint as it happens. This TVpaint is not the same unfortunately. Its made by a French company and is a very good 2D animation program. https://www.tvpaint.com I bought it when doing a course, so got it at educational price. Otherwise its rather expensive. There are two flavours of it, standard and Pro. A staff member on the course advised me not to bother with the Pro version and, sadly, I took that advice. Wish I'd got the Pro version now. I've barely touched it, let alone scratched the surface.Hoping to use this project to gain experience for the next one and take it a few steps further along. It has a lot of features and its emulation of traditional media is first rate. Rather than me waffle on about it, try the Aaron Blaise tutorials on Youtube ? This is one of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_B8lB3Gf_w I have tried it yet but, Studio Ghibli released the 2D software they use, as Freeware. Its supposed to be very good. Might be worth looking up if interested ? regards simon https://lifehacker.com/opentoonz-the-2d-animation-software-used-by-studio-ghi-1767833445

Thank you very much for your help. Much appreciated. How did you get it to 6mins.Did you used 64bit AM ? I was thinking of getting a windows machine just to use for rendering out with AM64 and nothing else. But haven't jumped yet. regards Simon

Thank You very much Robert. I shall try to sort it out. regards simon

I'm working away on a project which will combine AM animation with hand drawn animation in TVpaint. I will post some interim results in the WIP space later. To make it easier at the drawing stage, I've started rendering out at UHD resolution.. Unfortunately, it is taking a long time to render each frame, between 7:30 and 10:00 hours. Thats not a big headache, although it would be better to shorten the time, as I can get on with something else while waiting. However, what is of concern is an inconsistency in the renders. These are png conversions from TGA originals Notice the shadows and the lighting, it is almost as if someone stepped in front of the light source? This is the next frame in the sequence. The only animated change in the objects, rather than the lighting or setting. It is more marked a few frames later in the sequence with a darker area on the back wall below the cupboard? and the next frame They were rendered on the same machine by the same iteration of AM. Could anyone kindly offer a possible reason and cure? Thank you. simon Mac Osx 10.85, Mac Mini, 2.3ghz, 4Gb RAM, AM V18p

Robert thank you very much for your help. Clearly my memory is not quite as bad as feared. It does exist, if only I could recall where too ! regards simon Ps altering the percentage seems to have got rid of the black lines too.

I have a memory (quite possibly faulty ) of seeing an option for setting the colour of toon lines as a % of the underlying colour, but can't seem to find it. I can find the option to colour the lines and so can set it to the diffuse values but not the %. Can anyone kindly point me in the right direction, or the memory error ? I wondered if, using a % the colour of the line would vary as the area moved in and out of shadow. Thank you. simon A curious anomaly when rendering, some of the lines come out at specified colour, others stayed black ?

Robert Thank you very much once again for your help. Very Much appreciated. I shall try that straight away. regards simon Robert That works grandly. Thank you. regards simon

Trying to set up a shadows only render in V18 using Z buffered shadows on a single spotlight. Shadow maps set to 4096. It doesn't appear to work. If I keep all the other settings the same, but change the spotlight shadows to ray traced instead. The shadows render as required. Is this a common problem and is there anyway to fix it ? Simon

The grind continues. As mentioned above, went for fresh install of V18, followed instructions as carefully as I could then tried to open Netrender.app. Each time it prompts me to find the Renderslave.app which I then navigate towards on the setup wizzard, that done, the first warning pops up Listening socket create failed Any messengers are already running ? When that is acknowledged the warning pops up ( three options, Ignore, report, reopen ) Render Messenger quit unexpectedly If I try any reopen, nothing happens. Ignore likewise If report is selected, the warning Render Messenger quit unexpectedly pops up If report is selected it lists the details. I am not qualified to be able to make too much sense of the info so, I've copied and pasted those into a text file but, don't want to post them yet in case it infringes protocol. Can do if needed ? If I then go to Render Sever and try to open a .prj file, the warning pops up RenderServer quit unexpectedly ( same three options) Despite the warning that it quit, the icon still shows as active in the taskbar. If that is selected the warning pops up Apple event timed out RenderServer got an error:appleEvent timed out. (-1712) It is getting rather frustrating simon

Steve Thank you for your help. Pardon my delayed response.Domestic duties intervened. Present state of play is that I, uninstalled V18 and V17 and got fresh DL's off the FTP site. Used those to try and set up net render with both V17 & V18. Unfortunately, each time I try to use net render on either iteration, the following message gets flagged up. and proceedings grind to a halt. I had tried to follow the guidelines as clearly as possible and had previously accepted the defaults, as specified in Mark W's instructions. The setting suggested it lead to the correct location but, it appeared to need manually selecting as well.. So did that. its getting a bit frustrating so, being english, will go off and have a cuppa tea before resuming regards simon

Steve Thank you very much for your help, it is much appreciated. I have managed to make some progress, albeit of a limited kind. I went back to V17 and got as far as dragging the slaves onto the job, only to encounter this problem. Each time I tried it came up with an error message.Being new to this, it took me a while to read the error message and I was perplexed by it because it seemed to be asking for the render slaves in the V18 folder and not being able to find them. That was puzzling in two ways. 1. It had all been setup in the V17 folder to run with V17. 2. The V18 folder was right next to it in the Applications directory. I went back to the render server.app to see if it could be edited towards the V17 folder but it would not allow that ( will try another idea in a bit ) Regards simon

Steve Thank you very much for the info and help. Very much appreciated. I shall try to follow it through. I was lazily carrying on using Multiple master but, can't seem to get that working in 18p either. The multiple copies keep dropping out. Its frustrating. regards simon

It has taken me a long time to do i, largely because I was awaiting getting V18 afresh to use with the Imac. That done, now trying to set up Netrender on it. Followed the instructions in Mark W's tutorial ( As itemed by Rodney above ) only to encounter a problem. I open up net render and it opens up the four copies of Render Messenger But, when the new job icon, top left, or the New option under File, is selected the program crashes out I've tried it several times but the problem recurs every time. Is it a known problem with Macs or, more likely, have I made an error in setting up the script ? ANy help greatly appreciated simon V18P Imac 3,1ghz, Intel Core I5, 8Gb RAM, OSX 10.11.4

Robert Thank you very much. That is very good news. regards Simon

Is it possible to edit a decal stamp ( a long time ) after it has been applied ? It is only as I get to a closeup shot that I find that there is a patch on a face cheek that the stamp missed. A bit of a clanger on my part. Rather than go back and redo it by flattening the model and starting over again, can it be done abother way ? Any help greatly appreciated. Thank you simon

Mark Thank you for your help. I too had gone over mainly to png files ( can't help calling them 'pings' ) but these were files used earlier in jpg format. Don't know if its part of the same problem but, I've sometimes had trouble withV18 rendering out png files which, when trying to open in Photoshop later, I get the message "unable to open file because PS cannot parse the file format. As a consequence of that I've gone back to using TGA for rendering out still sequences. regards simon