Anim8or Community

This topic has been moved to Finished Works and Works in Progress.

http://www.anim8or.com/smf/index.php?topic=3555.0

Another round is here after the very successful "Dragon" challenge and the goal is to create a model of any sports equipment.

It can be anything you want: a tennis rocket, a formula 1 car or a bobsleigh track... Just make sure you provide a nice still render before the deadline!

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Deadline: March 14th

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Remember the challenge rules and post your progress, c&c, and/or final renders in this topic.

Good luck to everybody!

The Simple Machines challenge inspired me to create this short animation. I found myself too lazy to create a good, textured model for the challenge, so I started animating.

The whole thing was done in 2 hours, I spent most of the time trying to simulate physics...

Check out the video: http://vimeo.com/8630276

Lately I've read a lot of posts about the Anim8or renderer being too slow and I thought I would post several tips on how to speed it up.

Some golf players say "There's no bad weather...just bad clothing". The same goes for the Anim8or renderer. There's no slow renderer... just wrong scene setups, wrong renderer configurations and impatient users.

Rule #1: Be patient.
This will not speed up the rendering process, but it's the most important rule. If it takes an hour or 2 to render a complex scene, there's no need to worry. If it takes a day or 2, then you should read the rest of this post.

Rule #2: Do not use the ART Raytracer unless you have to.
The good old Scanline renderer is much faster and if you do not need reflections, refractions or special shadow effects, there's no reason to use the ART Raytracer. You can also use environment maps to simulate simple reflections using the Scanline renderer. I think people forget about that...

Rule #3: Decrease the image size.
Large images take longer to render, that's not surprising. If you are not planning to use the image as your desktop background, you definitely do not need higher resolution than 1024x768. I think 800x600 is the perfect size in most cases.

Rule #4: Decrease the polygon count.
This rule is pretty obvious, but many people ignore it. Objects that are far from the camera do not need that much detail. In some cases you can replace your objects with extremely simple low-poly models without any impact on the quality of the final image. You can also fake details using textures and hide all non-visible objects.

Rule #5: Decrease texture sizes.
Before using a 1024x1024 (or even larger) texture, ask yourself: is it necessary? Good textures are the key to a good looking image, but too large textures increase the render time significantly.

Rule #6: Do not overuse bumpmaps.
Bumpmap textures have a strong impact on the render time.

Rule #7: Not all the lights in your scene have to cast shadows.
In real life every light source creates a shadow, but unfortunately shadows take very long to render. If you disable shadows for some lights, there might not be any visible difference in the final image, but the renderer performance will be much better. You can also fake some shadows using textures.

Rule #8: Decrease the RayDepth value.
Ray depth determines how many times each ray is reflected/refracted. Setting a lower value will boost up the performance of the ART Raytracer, especially if there's a lot of glass in your scene. The default value of 12 is usually more than you need, a very low value (such as 3 or 4) usually does not make any visible difference. See the image attached to this post. One of the spheres was rendered with the default RayDepth setting (12), the other one was rendered using the value of 2. Can you see any difference?

If you want to change the RayDepth value, go to the scene mode and click "Scene > Attributes...". Click "new", write "RayDepth" (without the quotes) and click "Ok". Select the "int" option and then type a number to the textbox below.

Rule #9: Decrease the number of AA samples.
Make sure you are not using more AA samples than you actually need. I always set the number of AA samples to 4 when making test renders and then I increase the value until I get what I want. If you're not using the Ambient Occluder, a value of 64 or (at most) 100 should be enough.

Rule #10: Render the AO pass separately.
The Ambient Occluder requires a very high number of AA samples (at least 144) if you want a grainyless image. When rendering the AO pass separately, all the materials are white, there are no lights, no shadows, no reflections or refractions. Therefore you can use a very high number of AA samples without having to wait for ages...
However, you'll need an advanced image editor (such as Photoshop or Gimp) to combine the AO pass with the main render.

Rule #11: Sometimes Photoshop is faster...
Post-production is a part of the process. Some special effects (such as lens flare, glowing lights etc.) can be created in Anim8or, but they increase the render time. If you have Photoshop or other advanced program, you do not need to wait for the Anim8or renderer...

Rule #12: Read rule #1 once more!

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Ok, that's all. Any questions and more tips on improving the performance are welcome!

It took less than 5 minutes to write this plugin... And it will save you a lot of time

I got this idea when working on my entry for the "Take a photo" challenge. I was working on a texture and whenever I saved a new version of the texture file, I had to open the texture editor in Anim8or, delete the texture and load it again to see my model with the new texture. That's quite annoying...

I always thought it would be cool to have a button that would just reload a texture... Well, here it is!

Install the plugin and then click "Script > ReloadTextures" to reload all the textures in your project instantly. Cube map textures will be reloaded as well.

If you have a lot of textures in the project, reloading might take a few moments. Be patient...

I might create another version of the script to reload only the textures that are used in the currently opened object. It would increase the performance considerably when working on large projects... Let me know what you think about it.

This topic has been moved to ASL Scripts.

http://www.anim8or.com/smf/index.php?topic=2546.0

The task is simple: create and render a space scene.

It can be anything you want - a detailed model of our solar system, a sci-fi spaceship fight or Neil Armstrong walking on the moon... Everything is allowed as long as it can be called a "Space scene".

You can use any software you want for minor tasks (such as texturing or post-production), but most of the modeling and the final render must be done in Anim8or.

Your final entry should be one still image. Judging will be based on the best looking Anim8or render, the one who gets the most votes wins.

Post your progress, c&c, and/or final renders in this topic!

Deadline: Monday, July 20th, 2009