Help Cloud Peak animation

[miqtidar]

Hello,

Anyone from planetside can post the render settings of
"Cloud Peak animation by Martin Huisman, aka Tangled-Universe" on
http://www.planetside.co.uk/content/view/60/98/

I Think Cloud peak animation is most flicker free animation i have seen till now in this forum.

Actually i am rendering an animation of 72 farms and i have tried every possible render setting from this forum. But i still see flickers in animation.

Here is few render settings i have tried and rendered 2 or 5 frames so i can see the results. But no flicker removed.



---------------------------------
Detail 0.5
AA 9
GI 4
GI 4
GI Blur 200
Bucket 128
Box
Detail BL 1
Displacement FL 1
-----------------------------------
Detail 0.5
AA 9
GI 2
GI 2
GI Blur 80
Bucket 128
Box
Detail BL 1
Displacement FL 1
-----------------------------------

Detail 0.5
AA 9
GI 2
GI 2
GI Blur 40
Bucket 128
Box
Detail BL 1
Displacement FL 1
-----------------------------------

If any body can put me in the right direction for the flicker free animation that would be great.

miqtidar

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi Miq,

I designed that scene and with help of Oshyan we worked out the best render settings for this scene.
I explicitly say "this scene" because rendersettings aren't 1:1 transferable between scenes/projects.

At the moment I'm not at home, but I'll try to provide you with some info asap as I don't know it by heart.
Maybe it used ray traced atmosphere already I can't remember exactly anymore.
Hopefully it will be of any use.

Cheers,
Martin

[miqtidar]

Thanks Tangled-Universe I will be waiting....

Thanks alot

[freelancah]

I believe you need to try with GI 0 and perhaps Oshyans fill light setup
There have been a lot of discussion about the flickering matter so I also suggest you try the search function to find them.

[Oshyan]

GI was actually used in that render, we just use suitably high settings. Not being able to see the results of your tests I can't say for sure what the problem is as there are several types of "flickering" that might be occuring, some caused by GI or other lighting issues, some caused by displacement "popping", some from aliasing, etc.

I would suggest changing your AA filter to Mitchell-netravali or even Cubic B-spline; results from the latter will be a bit "soft" but generally for animations you won't be able to preserve a ton of fine detail upon compression anyway, and sharp edges can result in artifacts and further aliasing. The AA filter can have a much bigger impact than the level of AA itself in many cases.

AA9 should be fine for most scenes, in fact it may be overkill. I think I used between 6 and 8 for the referenced mountain animation.

At any rate if you can show some comparative clips with accompanying settings or even just an image to show the kind of scene, that would help us give better, more specific advice. Motion clips would be best though.

- Oshyan

[miqtidar]

Thanks Oshyan for reply by reading your post i got some new ideas to try.

Any way here is the settings. And I am also Posting 2 frames in jpg format you can view both together in image viewer or fchek  to compare the results.
GI
Detail 1
AA 9
GI 2
GI 2
GI Blur 200
Bucket 128
Box
Detail Blending 1
Displacement filter  1

I setting is too slow for rendering animation plus I still see shadow pops and lighting pops.
thanks.

[Tangled-Universe]

The strata shader is pretty heavy in regard to displacements.

To be honest I think a scene like this is at the moment close to impossible to render with reasonable speed.

Set GI strength to 1 and sampling to 6. Keep the blur. Reduce AA to 6, because 9 is not necessary I'd say.
Make sure your atmosphere samples are high enough. Are you using raytraced atmosphere?
If so, and you're using AA6 then use 32 samples.
If not, use 64 samples.
Now with these settings the atmosphere artefacts should be near zero.
Flickering and other issues are then likely to be caused by the heavily displaced terrain.
You then might try to increase the displacement tolerance in the planet node from 1 to 2 and then render a couple of frames.

Maybe you can post your project file here so we can try some things ourselves?
That would speed this process up.

Cheers,
Martin

[miqtidar]

Thanks alot Tangled-Universe,

That was great help. I will try it tonight. And post some samples here.

Okay I am posting the TGD file here for guys to give a try.

I am looking for clean renders like we shot it on camera.

[miqtidar]

Hello Tangled-Universe,

I have rendered 2 frames on your Recommendation and plus keeping some of previous settings, here are those settings.

---------------------------------------

Displacement Tolerance Under Planet Node   #   1
Atmosphere Number Of Sample # 64

Render settings
---------------------------------------
Detail # 1
AA # 6
GI relative detail # 1
GI sample quality # 6
GI blur radius # 200
Ray Trace Objects # Checked on
Supersample # unchecked off
Pixel Filter # Cubic B Spline (Soft)
Anti-Aliasling bloom # Checked on
Detail blending # 1
Displcement Filter # 1
---------------------------------------

I still see some of flickering, I am also posting the 2 frames so you can see yourself. I am going to render 2 more frames with Displacement Tolerance Under Planet Node with 2 and post more images.

Actually i am looking for Flicker free results.

Do you think this flicker is from GI or Displacement Tolerance or I need more GI sample or I need more Atmosphere Sample.

Thanks,
miqtidar

[Oshyan]

Hi miqtadar, seeing the images and TGD really helped a lot. I am currently running some tests and I think I have some good results for you, but I am not sure of the render time comparisons, which is the only problem. Can you post another TGD that includes the render settings you used for either the original 2 images or the 2 you posted most recently? My results are a bit different, for example I am at Detail 0.5 (based on your original settings post), and I suspect you are rendering at higher detail based on the images you're posting.

I can tell you that none of the suggestions so far will fully solve your problem, but if you give me another 24 hours or so, I can probably give you a TGD with stable results.

- Oshyan

[miqtidar]

Hello Oshyan, Thanks alot for helping me out.

Yes i am rendering on very high quality settings Time is not the issue with me i am after the quality of images from Terragen , Imean Production like shots from Terragen.

I read from the people posts on this forum Terragen 2 had lot of flickering issues in animation.
And now after talking to guys and figuring out the rendering issues and removing flickers from my animation.
My opinion is changing about Terragen.

Its not Terragen which have issues its your settings and the patience you have to wait for excellent quality to be produced by Terragen.

Any way Here is the TGD file from recent post.

miqtidar

[miqtidar]

Hey guys here is another render i have done it took 9 hours and few minutes to render only 2 frames.

Off course result is improving and i think i am almost close to flicker free video.

Here is my new settings.

---------------------------------------

Displacement Tolerance Under Planet Node   #   2
Atmosphere Number Of Sample # 128

Render settings
---------------------------------------
Detail # 1
AA # 6
GI relative detail # 1
GI sample quality # 6
GI blur radius # 200
Ray Trace Objects # Checked on
Supersample # unchecked off
Pixel Filter # Cubic B Spline (Soft)
Anti-Aliasling bloom # Checked on
Detail blending # 1
Displcement Filter # 1
---------------------------------------

I only increased
Displacement Tolerance Under Planet Node to 2 and Atmoshpere Number Of Sample to 128.
Flicker is almost removed except few parts of the frames.

New frames render are attached.

miqtidar

[Oshyan]

I have all but resolved this problem. I should have a TGD for you later tonight. And, unless your system is much slower than mine, it won't take 4.5 hours per frame. It's important to note that in this scene atmosphere samples will have a *minimal* effect. More to come...

- Oshyan

[miqtidar]

Thanks Oshyan,

I will be waiting.

[Oshyan]

Try the attached. Still may need a little work, render time might be able to be reduced (hopefully), but it's better than the last test file you gave me and certainly better than 4.5hrs/frame.

More details to follow.

- Oshyan