Rendering procedure and questions

[wt200999]

This will be my first year doing this so its a little new to me as far as rendering procedure. I have a series of questions and I could use some pointers too (as well as some other people I hope )

-Can I set up and render into one file, several different scenes. They all have different lighting in them, one even uses video post.
-Should I be using skylight (makes everything look better) and if so, how long for an animation usually would you guess it would take with a network render on ~18 computers? All with about 1 gig of ram (I dont know much about network rendering though)
-I have no clue what I am doing with network rendering, but I have found a tutorial on it, but if you have any pointers it would be very helpful (I saw someone here doing it well)
-The thing about the blank borders, is there an easy way to do this without having to edit all of my cameras?
-Is another program allowed to be used to join clips together, or make the border?

Thank you.

[Theflexmaster]

-You can just merge all the files together to make a final scene, if thats what you mean. For the video post make sure you make the video post assigned by object id (so not everything gets the effect of the video post). Also for big scenes i'd recommend xrefing.

-If you mean skylight than it shouldn't be all that big of a addition to rendering. If you use the new daylight system in max 9, a lot of problems can occur with mr sky and mr sun. It can increase render time sometimes. Render time is based on the complexity of the scene for the most part.

-You could try bucket rendering with mental ray. This makes it so more than one computer works on a frame. Since mental ray is split into blocks when rendered, one computer can render a bucket (block) while another computer does another. This is limited to 8 processors (8 buckets) on one render, which sucks cause it'd be nice to have like 50 computers all rendering one frame at a time making like a super computer. Network rendering is a good alternative though, it splits up frames to each computer. Use backburner to do this, thats the only way i really know how to do it.

-I know there is a way to join clips through video post. I really don't know the process for it, alpha compositing maybe... i'm really not sure.

[Morgan Gillespie]

We did our entire animation through video post last year, learning it as we went. You can do camera changes, toss in video clips, fade ins, fade outs, many different things, but it is not worth it.
Use an external application to tie them together, you can even use windows movie maker, and I know what you are saying. "But 3dsm hates wmvs.", then download a converter, convert the wmv into an avi or what have you, and run it through video post to convert it to a .mov with the right codecs and framerate.

Audio has a different story... and can be added in the curve editor.

[k3`]

Yep, I agree with Mercury Rising (Morgan) here. Video posting in 3D Studio Max is simply not worth the time and effort. By using an external video editing application, you will have much more flexibility with effects, sound, and such. I'd have your team invest in some cheap or expensive (depending on budget) rendering software. Remember, the final render has to come out in a quicktime format for submission.

Side note: Wow, you guys are lucky to have 18 computers to render on. We have two: one dual core and one old dual cpu computer.

[wt200999]

Is it allowed in the rules to use another program (I'd end up using pramier in that case) to do that stuff? As far as video post I have glow effects (and star effects ) in that.

The 18 computers are all just the ones in our tech lab on the network, I could probibly use them over a weekend or something, all have only 1 gb of ram and a not dual core processor. I might end up brining my new computer in to help out in that case, make it even faster. (dual core, 2 gig ram )

So far with video post I have found what I have so far in it easy to do, your saying I can just render all the other stuff seperatly and add them to my video post? That would probibly be the way to go for me. That would also make it more flexable, render one scene, tweak it to my likeing, then do another, then finally the one with video post, and add sound. I'll look into the video post somemore.

The skylight, when I added it to this scene took a while to render. Im testing out the mr sky and me sun right now.

I dont think I will do bucket rendering for this, sounds like a good method though if I had 8 higher end machines. For this I will probibly just net render. Do all of the computers need to have 3ds max on it? I will look into this more. Thank you all very much.

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by wt200999

Is it allowed in the rules to use another program (I'd end up using pramier in that case) to do that stuff? As far as video post I have glow effects (and star effects ) in that.

The 18 computers are all just the ones in our tech lab on the network, I could probibly use them over a weekend or something, all have only 1 gb of ram and a not dual core processor. I might end up brining my new computer in to help out in that case, make it even faster. (dual core, 2 gig ram )

So far with video post I have found what I have so far in it easy to do, your saying I can just render all the other stuff seperatly and add them to my video post? That would probibly be the way to go for me. That would also make it more flexable, render one scene, tweak it to my likeing, then do another, then finally the one with video post, and add sound. I'll look into the video post somemore.

The skylight, when I added it to this scene took a while to render. Im testing out the mr sky and me sun right now.

I dont think I will do bucket rendering for this, sounds like a good method though if I had 8 higher end machines. For this I will probibly just net render. Do all of the computers need to have 3ds max on it? I will look into this more. Thank you all very much.

You can use other programs to composite your animation entry and premiere is very good for compositeing sound but, I HIGHLY RECOMEND THAT YOU DONT USE ADOBE PREMIRE FOR THE FINAL OUTPUT OF YOUR ENTRY. While premire is good for video, editing sound, and such, it is just awful with the required codecc (NSTC- DV/DV PRO .mov). Trying to export in this codecc using premire will butcher the quailty of your video like a dozen pigs in a giant blender on liquify. Instead I recomend exporting your video as an Uncompressed .avi (make sure that the video is getting exported as "progressive scan" and not "lower fields first" or "upper fields first") then importing it into Avid DV pro. Its far better with the NSTC codecc.

And while avid is great with the NSTC codec. I personally dont like the interface of the program and only use it to change the video format.

[vadyr]

We use Adobe Premiere to put all of the scenes together in the end. I know everyone hates it because of the codec problems, but not to be condescending or anything, but if you know what you are doing, you can get an awesome quality video out of it using the codec you need to use for submission. If anyone needs help with it, feel free to PM me. If i can help, I'd be more than happy to do so. Any animation questions at all, please ask away. We've got a small task force of animators that just sit and slave over computer for hours on end, and we're always happy to help a fellow team. PM, IM, or email me! Good luck all!

[wt200999]

According to BuddyB309 Premiere is not a good program for the necessary codec, and I guess other people have said that, but you say you can use it. If so, what might be the reason that everyone is having probliems? If you could post a quick guide that would be great. If it works then I guess I will be using Premeire pro, otherwise I will do what Buddy suggested. If you could write a guide that would be great. (Probibly easier then explaining it over aim or email to several different people. )

[Kevin Thorp]

Premiere is a top of the line video editing program. I'm pretty sure it can generate sharp .MOVs - if the settings are correct.

But it's also very expensive. We downloaded a free trial of Adobe's lower cost version: "Premiere Elements". Hope to test it in the next few days. I'll post a report soon.

We've used Pinnacle Studio in the past, but it doesn't do MOVs.

[BuddyB309]

Here is what our team did:

We had separate computers rendering different parts of our animation. So we endend up with a bunch of little clips of our animation. We imported them in premire and put the clips together. We also added sound and voice overs in premire. Then we tried exporting our animation from premire useing the required codecc. Our video came out with a whole bunch of artifacts. Remembering I had this problem last year I suggested we get Avid DV Pro, cause it was better with the required codec. So we exported our animation in a different coddecc useing premire (uncompressed avi file) then imported it into avid DV pro. Then in avid we didn't have to do any editing cause it was already done in premire. We justed used Avid to convert our animation into the required format and it came out beautifully. No artifacts at all. It looks wonderful.

[Mazin]

I tried out Video Post... and it can do everything (albeit clumsily) except sound (unless I'm mistaken). I don't have Premiere (and I won't be pirating it). It looks like I'll be finangling the video in Zwei-Stein 4 or Cinelerra and encoding it with Max. Both are very capable video editors, but I think Cinelerra might be overly professional and intimidating.

[Mazin]

Who here set their pixel aspect ratio to 0.9 like NTSC-DV is supposed to be?

[Kevin Thorp]

I downloaded a free trial of Adobe Premere Elements 3.0. Unfortunately it puts an Adobe logo on the top right of the video . The retail version doesn't have the logo. It costs about $100 & has a $30 rebate.

It's a relatively simple and powerful video editing program, but I can't figure out how to improve the quality of the QuickTime DV-NTSC output. I've tried adjusting all the Quicktime settings to their maximum quality, without any visible improvement.

I'm going to post a question on the Adobe forum, but worst case scenerio is we render our clips in Max as uncompressed AVIs or Targa files, edit them in Premiere, save a single uncompressed AVI, then use Max to convert that to a Quicktime DV-NTSC file. It sounds complicated but it's actually pretty simple and the final output looks great.

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by Kevin342

I downloaded a free trial of Adobe Premere Elements 3.0. Unfortunately it puts an Adobe logo on the top right of the video . The retail version doesn't have the logo. It costs about $100 & has a $30 rebate.

It's a relatively simple and powerful video editing program, but I can't figure out how to improve the quality of the QuickTime DV-NTSC output. I've tried adjusting all the Quicktime settings to their maximum quality, without any visible improvement.

I'm going to post a question on the Adobe forum, but worst case scenerio is we render our clips in Max as uncompressed AVIs or Targa files, edit them in Premiere, save a single uncompressed AVI, then use Max to convert that to a Quicktime DV-NTSC file. It sounds complicated but it's actually pretty simple and the final output looks great.

As I say again

Originally Posted by buddyb309

You can use other programs to composite your animation entry and premiere is very good for compositeing sound but, I HIGHLY RECOMEND THAT YOU DONT USE ADOBE PREMIRE FOR THE FINAL OUTPUT OF YOUR ENTRY. While premire is good for video, editing sound, and such, it is just awful with the required codecc (NSTC- DV/DV PRO .mov). Trying to export in this codecc using premire will butcher the quailty of your video like a dozen pigs in a giant blender on liquify. Instead I recomend exporting your video as an Uncompressed .avi (make sure that the video is getting exported as "progressive scan" and not "lower fields first" or "upper fields first") then importing it into Avid DV pro. Its far better with the NSTC codecc.

And while avid is great with the NSTC codec. I personally dont like the interface of the program and only use it to change the video format.

Adobe elements is the same thing as adobe premire expect that adobe elements is just a watered down version of adobe premire. Export your video from adobe elements as uncompressed avi and then get the trial version of Avid dv pro. Avid dv pro is Very good with the required codecc.

[Kevin Thorp]

Thanks for the help Buddy, but another helpful guy on a Premiere forum solved the quality problem.

It's not a Premiere issue; it's a simple setting in QuickTime player. I went into "Edit", "Preferences" and checked "Use high quality video setting when available." Now the Premiere-generated .MOVs look very sharp!