Trying something new… again.

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If anyone at all is following this I’m sorry for changing my mind so often… not really…

So in my search for a new renderer I came across a vastly lengthy post on FXGuide http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-state-of-rendering/

It has been my aim from the beginning to find a renderer that is physically plausible and doesn’t take a lot of twiddling to get a good look. With Mental Ray I would render using all sorts of tricks to get a good look, like occlusion, Global Illumination and Final Gather and all of these aren’t really how light actually works. This is what brought me back to Maxwell. As nice as Maxwell is, it’s not really conducive to quick and easy changes bar the lighting with its fancy fancy multi-light feature. Some of you out there in the bigger VFX houses will probably laugh at this, but more often than not I’ll have a client sit with me and ask for less reflections, more ambient light, less of a shadow, etc. and I just can’t do that with Maxwell without breaking everything into layers and shooting the already expensive render time through the roof. So now I’ve got a dilemma on my hands, on one hand I want physically accurate, on the other hand I want flexibility to basically break physics to keep client happy. So now what?

In comes Arnold. Through all my reading and video tutorials I’ve downloaded it seems to have the best of both worlds as well as being popular amongst the bigger VFX houses out there. It renders similarly to Maxwell but it’s not such a hardcore light simulator as such. It has these things called Arbitrary Output Variables (AOVs) that let you output everything my clients like, and then some; all this at very little extra render time. The main settings are also sample based like in Maxwell, up the samples and balance with the ray depth until you’re happy with the quality. I haven’t 100% switched over yet, but it looks promising. Environment wise it is a little ahead of Maxwell 2.7 (Their previous version) in terms of fog, atmosphere, and fluid effects. You turn it on and the lights in your scene light it up. I’m still confused about the reason for separate reflection and glossy reflection shader settings, but I’m sure I’ll figure out why soon.

In the mean time I’ve redone my car in Maxwell and it’s going to render for another four days, so I’m not starting that over. My original Mental Ray render was taking a good 20 hours a frame. Either I did something wrong or the amount of plants and geometry was just crazy… the Maxwell render has no such plant life – it’s in a studio. Yeah yeah it’s cheating but it looks good. It’s only a reel intro, I must stop faffing and do a new project.

Right now it’s lunch time… off to MacDonald’s 🙂

Obligatory New Year Post

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I’m waiting for a few matts to render out so I’ve got some time to fill a gap. I haven’t written in a while so I might as well update. So no rant today, sorry 😛

Christmas and New Years were lots of fun. Had lots of family and friends over, and my girlfriend and I have decided we don’t like people and are going to be hermits for a bit.

I’ve discovered a new renderer, Maxwell. I absolutely love it. Unfortunately you show a client a low sample level render, because it’s quick, and they freak about about the grain in the shot. And it seems no amount of explaining that the grain will go away subdues their worry. Ah well, new things often scare the client. I try not to involve anyone in the technical stuff. I had this one client many years ago who would constantly stick his nose into my process, “Use Nuke, do it like this, why is your comp so bright, etc.” Which drove me nuts. I’ve never heard of anyone going to a mechanic and asking them if they use a Bosch drill or a Black and Decker screwdriver; that’s downright ridiculous.

My little car that I’ve been working on has taken a back seat to a few other things I’ve got going, but there’s about 73 frames left then I’m going to comp the whole shot. But… there’s a big but… With my rediscovery of Maxwell I’m thinking of doing it over. I will let this Mental Ray render finish however (Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot here).

So what does this new year hold for me? A new show reel, I can tell you that much; it’s WAY overdue. I’m going to be learning the shit out of Maxwell. What I find now is that I don’t have as many technical hurdles to jump with Maxwell as I did with Mental Ray. So this means that it’s down to my creativity and insight into photography to get things looking good now. And that’s a good thing; I’ve had enough of only one side of my brain being challenged.

I’m also going to be learning how to fly. I was recently gifted a flight in a little aeroplane and the pilot and I had a long chat in amongst the stalls and low flying over jet skiers. He gave me the yoke (The joystick) and let me fly for a bit and I loved it! Once we had landed he explained the costs of learning to fly and all the technical details and I’m very keen. It’s expensive but I can go without sushi for a while… And who knows, in a few years I’ll be able to fly myself and three friends down to Durban if I wanted to. My girlfriend giggled like a schoolgirl at the thought of me being a pilot and that motivated me even more.

Oh look my matts have finished. I may update more next week with an update of my car.