[Tim Ellis]

Hopefully a .mov or .avi export from multilight panel may be possible, along with resolution change for ml exports. Hint hint.

Tim.

[Fernando Tella]

At least uncompressed video file would be ok.

[Bubbaloo]

Hey, good idea. You should add that to the wish list!

[tom]

Hi Fernando, I know it's delayed but I uploaded a tutorial doing this with Blender.

http://think.maxwellrender.com/building ... er_91.html

[Fernando Tella]

I saw the tutorial at the THINK! site and came back to this topic just to realize you had already told about it. So, I'm a bit late too.

Thanks Tom, the more I learn about Blender the more I like it.

[tom]

Yeah, I wish everybody use it as much as possible because it's one of the most successful freeware project on this planet. I simply adore their efforts.

[Tim Ellis]

Yeah, I wish everybody use it as much as possible because it's one of the most successful freeware project on this planet. I simply adore their efforts.

Blend the planet!

[w i l l]

What is the standard format for saving out a sequence of image files for animation? - i was using jpg then saved tif's but Virtualdub wouldn't let me load tifs... i would have thought that tifs would be the standard for higher quality?

[ivox3]

I never use tiff's Will, ... just jpegs(for size reasons), ..and commonly, ..BMP's. For an animation, .. you don't need all that extra data in a tiff. (usually)

[w i l l]

Ok i'll stick to jpg then.

Also... i'm doing an animation at the moment (my first) and obviously its taking a while to render out 100+ frames. If this was for real - is there a way of making the iterative process easier, i.e. the client wants something changed so you need to re-render/animate which takes another 2 days? - do you just render the frames out really small/or use faster lower quality software to show them the test runs?

Oh and whats the usual resolution for animations (if there is a usual) - say for a product visualisation?

Cheers.

[ivox3]

Ok i'll stick to jpg then.

Also... i'm doing an animation at the moment (my first) and obviously its taking a while to render out 100+ frames. If this was for real - is there a way of making the iterative process easier, i.e. the client wants something changed so you need to re-render/animate which takes another 2 days? - do you just render the frames out really small/or use faster lower quality software to show them the test runs?

Oh and whats the usual resolution for animations (if there is a usual) - say for a product visualisation?

Cheers.

Alright, ... your kind of doing the trial by fire approach ... meaning, .. you have to figure out what resolution puts you right at the edge of reasonable render times and quality... I can't tell you more than that ... different projects with different needs ... you get the idea.


My basic method is to run test stills to get them as optimized as possible ... i.e., ....render as quickly as possible to a given SL.

Here's an example ... I did 420 frames at 500 x 377 -- that gave me a pretty good size for screen res. but didn't jack up the RT's too much .. I also used a material that would help conceal the grain,... a frosted type metal in this case ... Finally, ..I killed off any background geometry and lighting, .. so there were no wasted calculations. It took 6 hours on an 8 core and encoded/compiled with QT Pro in like 23 seconds on the 8 core. (QT Pro does a really job with multi-threading


Might not play so smooth with all those ridiculous ads ... but all the same ..
Just a simple path animation via Rhino, ... ** thanks to JD for even making that possible. Future animations ------ forthcoming...
direct:
http://www.zshare.net/video/5650836946a083/

PS. In terms of changes,... that's tough, .. even if you can do something with batch files in PS ... still a PITA ... you just have to inform your clients to the nature of the process -- good communication. And don't promise anything that your not certain of being able to do ... if there's a loose end that your thinking, .. "no problem ... I figure it out' ... it's gonna bite you in the ole arse.

[w i l l]

Thanks very much for info.

Is that animation saved as an AVI? I'm using Quicktime Pro now and wondering on best file format to export as. VirtualDub can save as GIF - don't think Quicktime can although not sure. Also... what SL did you take each frame to?

Another thing - how do you price animations in comparison to still renders? Is there an ivox3 formulae?

[ivox3]

Thanks very much for info.

Is that animation saved as an AVI? I'm using Quicktime Pro now and wondering on best file format to export as. VirtualDub can save as GIF - don't think Quicktime can although not sure. Also... what SL did you take each frame to?

If you want to make things easier for people who don't know what they're doing (lol) then .mov is usually a good format, ...avi is good too, but what's really important is the codec you use to encode with ... H.264 and Sorrenson are popular. That file was originally around 15MB's without compression, .. H.264 crushed it down to around 700Kb's and still looks good --- an 'email-able' file now... nice.


Another thing - how do you price animations in comparison to still renders? Is there an ivox3 formulae?

No ivoxian rule there ... lol ... uhhhm, .. they're more ?? Maybe others could drop a thought or two on this one ...

A little extra about codecs, ... you just have to experiment with finding the sweet spot in terms of min/max compression with any codec to find something that reduces the file size, but doesn't kill the quality ... but sometimes size isn't a concern ... so ....

[Maximus3D]

As you have QT already then you should be able to compress your movie with the H264 codec and get both good quality and nicely sized file. You can choose a good framerate, bitrate and compression level when you use that.

/ Max

[w i l l]

Ok thanks for that - thats set as a default.