Animation Dissapointment

[Bill Tillman]

I have created a 3D model of an addition to a residence and have done some decent renderings with it. So I thought why not do some animations with it as well. The first attempt was encouraging but the resolution was low and the rendering mode was draft, still it gave results that I felt compelled to go on with it.

 

I next set the ANIPATH settings to Presentation and 1024x768. And even with this i7 Quad Core with 12 GB of RAM it calculated that it was going to take 107 hours to complete. So I thought I'd start smaller and left the Presentation mode in place but reduced the resolution to 160x120 and even with that it took 4 hours to create a 10 second video using 30 FPS. When it completed I was completely frustrated to see the quality of it. The video was blurry compared to the Presentation renderings I did. The movement was smooth but the quality got worse as the camera moved around the model. When it got on to the opposite side of the sun the materials were still there with plenty of light on them but this horrible pinkish hue permeated the surfaces making the video totally unusable.

 

The file ended up being only 1.4MB which is too big to upload. But what was surprising was the file I did this morning at a much lower resolution was almost 4 times as big at 5.7MB.

 

Is this the best that AutoCAD rendering can do? Are other other settings I can use to improve the quality of the video. Having to wait 4 hours for what has turned out to be totally unusable video is a real drag. I also seem to have discovered that using a background instead of the sky will speed things up drastically.

[David Bethel]

Making animations is the most intense operation most people will do. ( Just ask George Lucas )

 

Moving at walking speed ( 3 miles per hr ) a camera will advance approx 0.5 " per frame @ 30fps. 60 fps is a better rate for high res stuff. ( 48 frames per foot )

 

so:

 

If it takes 2 minutes to render a single frame ( 30 frames per hour ) and you want to walk 30 ft then you need 1,400 frames ( 48 hours ) .

 

 

And that just gets you the frames.

 

And that only make a 24 second clip.

 

 

And then you get to edit, compile and format.

Here is a tutorial I use to remember all the steps needed to make good film clip:

 

Software
 HuffYUV
   Lossless codec
Unzip, Right click on INF file,  Choose Install
 VirtualDub
   Image editor and compiler
Install in it's own directory
 Avisynth
   Movie converter
Install in it's own directory
 HCEnc 2.4
   Avisynth Graphic User Interface
Unzip the 3 file into Avisynth's directory
   Send HCGui.exe to the desktop


Determine The Final Resolution For The Movie
- Multiples of 16 in both directions

Render the frames
- Min : Final Res + 16 In both Directions
- Max : 2 x Final Res Max
- Configure for 60 frame/sec smooth playback
- Configure for 30 frame/sec television style
- For walking speed animations, advance the camera 0.25" per frame @60 fps

Save the rendered images in a lossless format - TGA TIFF
- 24 bit color depth output
- TGA with RLE
- Use an icremental number system for the image files



Encode the images into a lossless video format in avi holder
*** VirtualDub
Files:
Drag the numbered image files into the file area

Filter:
- Resize to final resolution 
: filter with Precise Bilinear 
: use multiples of 16 for final size
- Choose HuffYUV encoder

Frame Rate:
- Choose your frame rate ( 60 or 30 )

AVI
- File Menu -> Save as AVI

Convert the lossless avi to a faster playback format
*** Avisynth
Make an ASCII file in Avisynth directory:
AVISource("myfile.avi")
ConvertToYUY2()

*** HCEnc 2.4 - m2v output
Use HCGui  ( on the desktop )

- Main tab
  Select the .avs file you just made
  Selct output file name
  Select log file name
  Bitrate 50,000 KBs max

- Settings 1 tab
    Enable Constant Quantization and pick a Quant Value.
   Profile :  Best
  dc precision :  10
- Settings 3 tab 
  Chroma output : 4:2:2

- Main Screen
 Encode ( will only appear when all values have proper settings )
  

  
  
Portable Playback
- USB portable - intallable on flash drive
- Player should have internal codecs for m2v format

Workstation playback 
- Fast Hard Drives
- Dual Core Processors
- Fast Video Card - Min ???MB Ram 
- Pre Installed codecs

 

A 100 MB file is not uncommon.

 

 

So if you can render 1 out every 100 frames as a test, that can save some headache as a proof read.

 

Good Luck. -David

[Bill Tillman]

Thanks for the tips. What I cannot comprehend is where did all this pink stuff come from. When I render the view from whatever side using Presentation mode and 1024x768 it takes less than 20 minutes to make a beautiful jpg that looks almost like the real thing. But with this animation exercise of this morning I'm wondering what I must be doing wrong. The blurry image is one thing but all this pink shade all over the otherwise beautiful wood paneling....I just don't get it unless I'm doing something major wrong.

[Jack_O'neill]

Sounds like it might be time to outsource to Industrial Light and Magic!

 

On a more serious note, I used to make the occasional slide show when I was designing machinery. Draw the thing, move some bit of it, take a snap shot, move it some more, take another snap shot..etc. Then string them all together and play it in a loop. Was really cool back in the 80's, probably not so much now. I haven't done it in years, but if Autocad still has that you might do something like that. would be a lot faster than waiting 2 days for 24 seconds of video!

[Bill Tillman]

I am happy to report that I tried it again and got much better results. This time I set the resolution to 800 x 600 and set the format to AVI instead of WMV. The pink colors I was referring to eariler did not show up this time and I think that might have been from taking a 160x120 video and enlarging it. The other setting I changed which drastically reduced the time was to use a background image instead of the Sun & Sky in AutoCAD.

 

The bad news is that for this one little 5 second video it took my i7 machine almost 6 hours. And without the Sun&Sky the image became a very dark when the camera rotated to the opposite end of the model. I can say that at least for the first two seconds of the animation the results are very impressive. I can see that to get the video I want I'm going to have to let this run all night. This latest file is 50MB in size, which is no surprise but it will make it hard to e-mail to my customer so I'm going to have to depend on him using FTP or other download method to acquire the file until I can figure out a way to stream the video via http.

[arjun_samar]

I have read somewhere in the net (quite long ago) that autocad don't uses all your ram resources for example you have an 12g ram even your os is 64bit autcad will only use 3gigs, autocad is not really intended for medium to big scale animations, there are more powerful software when it comes to animations, lightwave, 3ds max, maya to name a few but if learning new software is not an option, instead of rendering a full animation just render multiple views of your subject then convert them into an slide show (tip with ease in /ease out effect - window movie maker can do that) it will give an animation feel-it works for me since I only got core2duo laptop to do all my renderings. these is just to give a an example though the render was done in 3ds max but the concept are still the same. Hope this may help you Bill.

 

[Bill Tillman]

I started the above mentioned anipath last night around 9:30 PM and let it run. When I inspected it this morning at 6:00 AM it appears to have made little progress. The Creating Video is active but it still showing over 42 hours left to complete, while running on frame 100 of 600.

 

AutoCAD is showing off and on that it's not responding. But then it comes back before going in to non-responsive mode again. Task Manager is showing 100% CPU Usage on all cores, Memory is showing only 3.18 GB. That's surprising because I was specifically told that while doing a render, AutoCAD would use all avalable memory, which is why I bought the 12GB option instead of a lesser amount.

[Cad64]

Task Manager is showing 100% CPU Usage on all cores, Memory is showing only 3.18 GB. That's surprising because I was specifically told that while doing a render, AutoCAD would use all avalable memory, which is why I bought the 12GB option instead of a lesser amount.

 

Who told you that Autocad would use ALL available memory? RAM is used as necessary. You're never going to use all of it at any one time. If 3.18 is all that's being used then that's all thats needed. If you used ALL available memory, your system would just shut down because your computer would not have the ability to do any more calculations. The speed of the render is determined by the number of cores you have and how fast they can process the information. RAM just stores the calculations as they are being processed. Once the calculations are finished they are flushed and new calculations are processed.

 

Animation is an extremely intense rendering operation. If you're going to do it you have to expect very, very loooooooooong render times. Even on the best machine you will be waiting for days to finish an animation sequence that maybe only runs 30 seconds. You can't blame the machine, it's just the nature of the beast.

[Patrick Hughes]

I am by no means a rendering expert but here's a thought (or question)

 

If you are rendering to a 800 x 600 final size (that sounds like a good compromise) what is the size of the viewport of the scene that you are renering? In other words is the viewport size roughly 800 x 600? If I remember correctly when I've done some rendering it seemed that a larger viewport will take much longer to perform the render.

 

Regarding the "not responding" issue, AutoCAD is working away it just won't respond to user input (it is communicating with the rendering engine).

[David Bethel]

Most rendering engines that I know off take 3 or 4 passes at an image.

 

the 1st looks at every forth pixel

the 2nd looks at every 2 pixels

the 3rd every pixel

the 4th ( if requested ) does the antialiasing

 

So it short, 'Yes' the view size makes a large difference in times. -David

 

Then it can save the image to a specified file type.

[Jack_O'neill]

mslide and vslide...just sayin'

 

No, it's not animated, but you can make a slideshow of the whole house in half an hour.

[Cad64]

mslide and vslide...just sayin'

 

No' date=' it's not animated, but you can make a slideshow of the whole house in half an hour.[/quote']

 

Rendered with realistic materials, lighting and shadows? I don't see how that's possible.

[Jack_O'neill]

Rendered with realistic materials, lighting and shadows? I don't see how that's possible.

 

It's probably not, I was just throwing that in for humorous effect (hence the smilie). I haven't made a slide show in years. There's gotta be a better way than tying up a computer for a week to get a half a minute of video though.

 

Could you start that process and then go on vacation maybe?

[Cad64]

There's gotta be a better way than tying up a computer for a week to get a half a minute of video though.

 

Well, using a program that is better suited for the task would be a good start. But I'm not going to recommend that Bill buy a copy of Studio Max just so he can render animation faster. And even if he did buy Studio Max and set up a render farm he would still have to wait on long render times. Not as long as Autocad, but still a lot longer than a single still frame. That's just the way it goes.

 

I'm no expert in Autocad 3D though, so I don't know what is or is not possible when it comes to rendering and animation.

[Bill Tillman]

I can't afford a vacation but I do have other computers I can use while I wait until sometime Thursday night for this 20 second video/render at 800x600, High-res mode to complete. I checked it about an hour ago and it's on frame 148 of 600 and that's been running since about 8:00 PM last night. It's telling me it has roughly 45 hours left to go. Yes, I hate to tie up my favorite system but I'm very interested to see how this will turn out.

 

BTW I did some reading on Pixar's website and they claim that even with their big server farm some renderings take up to 90 hours for just a few moments of the movie. It all depends on what you're working with. My scene is not that complex but I'm convinced that a quick 20 second fly though of this model will have the oooh-aahh affect I'm looking for. And besides, it's a new skill I'm trying to learn and nothing beats rolling up your sleeves and diving right in.

[fuccaro]

I do have other computers I can use

Many years ago I played with 3D Studio max. There was an interesting feature, called net rendering (I think). A frame is sent to be rendered to the first free computer in the network, the next frame to the next computer and so on. I did just some amateurish tries in 3D Studio, no real jobs and no net rendering of course. I just remembered that.

[Cad64]

Yes, that's one of the advantages that Max has over Autocad in terms of rendering. With Max you can put together a render farm and utilize multiple computers to help distribute the render. So if you had 4 machines, with i7 processors, you would basically have 32 cores working on the render.

 

As far as I know, you can't do that with Autocad.

[Guinnessman]

I was going to post something along the same lines.

As Bill, I decided to run some motion path animations after getting some good results on some renders. The result was very disappointing. The first frame was good, but after that the frames deteriorated drastically. Each one progressively grainy and full of glare, at least, until my system crashed. I have run anipath on many jobs before without issue, albeit on a smaller scale. This particular DWG fie is 10MB. This is also the first anipath I have tried using 2012.

I sent details of my problem to Autodesk last Tuesday. Still no response.

My problem now is this. I want to push for my company to get me a higher spec computer so I can produce walkthroughs (they won't layout for 3DS MAX), But is there any point if Autocad vanilla can't produce decent walkthroughs no matter what computer I am using?

 

OOps, Sorry. Just realised by asking a question at the end I should probably have done this as a fresh thread. Sorry Bill !

[Cad64]

You guys might want to check out Accurender: http://www.accurender.com/

[David Bethel]

Yes, Accurender can do a render farm. It used to be an addon called Comotion, but I think it is built in now.

 

I have had only moderate success. You can definitely tell when the walkthru changes from 1 machine to the next. Lighting shadows etc all change a bit ( based on video cards I think )

 

I use vanilla acad ( R13 with Accurender 2.0) with a walkthru autolisp routine that I wrote a long time ago. -David