3D and rendering times

back in the hayday of the amiga, i did a lot of 3D animation on the plain vanilla A500. Needless to say, rendering times was through the roof!! I later updated to an A4000/040, and rendering times seemed to settle in the 5 to 20 minutes range per frame. this was in 320x240 half-vga resolution mind you. and max frames per animation in the 125+ range (5 seconds per animation)

i was really pleased with this, and could do just about anything i needed for myself and clients. Suddenly though, a client asks a simple request. make me a 1 minute continous animation, to be used in a music video.

one minute, thats, erm (quick headmath 25x60), 1500 frames, and yikes, it gotta be in full D2-PAL resolution (752x576).

i had to buy a pc. mostly coz' lightwave 3D was on pc as well so i could skip the learning curve from the transition. it had a whopping 266mhz processor and i fitted it with a 128mb of ram. and i could'nt believe the rendering speeds. i did a test, nearly 15 times faster with the same scene and same resolution.

that was before lightwave 7.0c came out. i had a quick look at the specs, and soon found out that a new motherboard, ram and cpu was needed. not to mention harddisks. on the bright side i was up in the cutting edge again, and could play all the fancy new games

well, long story short, due to all the wonderfull new effects and procedurals in lightwave 7.0c, my rendering times are back in the 5 to 20 minutes range, and to it off, my animations no run in the 300 to 600 frames range. but it looks better...

here's an example of a near 19 minutes frame:

 

(all frames are resized from D2 PAL to 400x300)

now this one only took about 13 minutes to render (and i had to render out 300 similar frames)

 

my latest project... this frame only took 30 seconds to render, how odd well, actually, the animation have to be finished by thursday, so keeping rendertimes down was an absolute must on this animation, and the one following it when i get around to it around 0400 later today

 

and for those wondering, yes i love yellow, and i love black

that was my 400th post btw, yippe!!

 

nice you like it. you gotta jump onto the 3D bandwagon again, it's a great way to make cool cgi. given a bit talent ofcourse.

i've seen through your website, and there are some great FX pictures there, trippy. so i guess the talent part got a big checkmark besides it

anyho' here's another small picture. i got a phonecall today at 1600 from my boss.

-eh, zy, you don't think you could make a small animation for radio 1 (national commercial radio)
-no prob, when is it due?
-erm, well, tomorrow at 1400...
-doh!
-gonna be ok?
-lessee, coffe? check. siggs? check. sleep? forget it. sure why not

i'm looking at an allnighter here. oh and they also wan't a cell-phone company thingy. but i got all the time in the world to get that finished. until the day after tomorrow atleast

 

most the stuff i do are for my own band. i'm doing right now a series of animations that will run all over the backwall on stage through the entire concert. each song will have at least 2-3 unique animations. that's 45 minutes of animation!! most are loops though, so i cheat a bit i also do some work for different local (sofar) bands, both video and live. this is mostly pro-bono work, but it's fun, and maybe some day i'll get a call from soad or faithless wanting anims from me. well, one can only hope, hehe

low pay and short time, the fate of all comercial artists but hey, i'd rather do this than work in, say, a grocery store or gutting fish in some fishing boat.

on the bright side, i had to cancel the cellphone thing i mentioned. they'll just have to manage with what they got. [which is a pityfull powerpoint thingy, lol] and give me proper deadlines. i did a lights metal-gig yesterday, with no sleep mind you. the oudoors big screen thing all day today, hungover, hrmm. big screen until 1600 tomorrow, and another metal gig until 0200 tomorrow. and more big screen on sunday. phew. no time to make animations with that kind of schedule.

the gig today tho went well here's a pic from the soundcheck...

 

and here is some of the crowd... [when zy saw, he was thinking: "jeez, better not fuck this one up...]

 

i'm strictly lightwave. i've pondered a bit with bryce, and it's cool enough when all you wan't to do is natural stuff, like landscapes, sea and animals and characters. to get good looking results you don't have to swallow a 1000 page plus manual. but as mentioned, rendering times are cruel on bryce, and in a commercial setting that is a big no-no.

my main reason for still sticking with lightwave, is that i know it so well. having used lw since it first came along as a standalone on the amiga many-many years ago (was it 92?) i just have to imagine what i want, make a few crude sketches and fire up the modeler. that is another thing i love with lightwave. seperate modeler and scene-layout, plus its modular way of implementing new features mainly through easy to use plugins.

anyho' when all the models are done, it's into layout. and when you get this far, you really can begin to smoke. layout is fun. setting the stage, all the lights and surfaces. making my 3d models come alive.

of course 3dsm is good too, but then you'd have to swallow a 3000 page manual. yikes. never got around to that

 

here is another still from a new animation going into the live show:

 

...here's another. and thanks to the hempress i got some cool new brushes for ps7 that will soon be put to use. gotta twist my brain a bit first and i'll get back to it

long live lightwave, hehe