Carrara Octane Plugin Settings for Animation (decreasing render time per frame)?
teknostorm
Posts: 163
I was just trying out the Octane plugin demo with Carrara and the results are impressive. However I need to know if I can speed up the animation rendering, before I buy it.
Right now when I render an animation, each frame takes two minutes or more, but I am satisfied with the image after 10 seconds of Octane render. Is it possible to render each frame for a limited duration only and then move to the next frame so I can speed up the animation rendering?
Comments
If you don't get a response from someone that uses it, look for recent threads by Sci-Fi funk. He's switched to rendering Carrara scenes in Octane.
In the meantime, while I don't have Octane, I have tried to follow along. From what I gather, you can define the number of samples per image/frame, but I don't know the interface, so hopefully someone will pop in, such as Mr. Funk or the esteemed Dustrider to help you out.
I think EP mis-spoke, I think he meant un- esteemed Dustrider.
I can't get to Octane right now to guide you to the exact location (trying to clone my boot drive to an SSD), but EP was right, just set the max samples to a lower value. You can set the value in the render target settings.
sampling
by default it is 3000 I go down to 10 on some scenes most about 50
Awesome, that did the trick! Now I'm sold on Octane.
Is there also a possibility to reduce the graininess on lower sample value renders? I have set the samples to 100 as lower than that the render is too grainy. Still it's just 4-8 seconds per frame now.
that is trade off
sadly
I go to 100 on some things more if not in a hurry, depends what in scene but certainly 3000 unneeded most cases
sunlight sky realistic sky is better than HDRI and emitters for clearer images quickly
Yes Ive set it to 100 (typed 50 by mistake have edited my post). I used realistic sky as well, it looks beautiful!
I wish I could have used it for the music video I finished :( only it didn't support video texture mapping!
As I just posted on your other thread, it DOES support video texture mapping.
Also as you may be aware, there are some different rendering kernels that you can use. The default is Direct Lighting which is a non-photorealistic renderer, although in many cases it does a very good job, and it is the fastest. You can also set the type of rendering as a sub-category in that kernel, I think the default is Ambient Occlusion but have a look and a play. If you want photorealism, you need either the Path Tracing or PMC, Path Tracing I think is generally faster but PMC can deal with some complex lighting situations better sometimes.
But for most animation tasks, I think the default will probably suit you just fine.
Thanks for the info PhilW! I wasn't aware of the rendering kernels, will try them. The default is looking wonderful as of now (I'm doing a cartoon animation).
I just tried to save the animation renders from my Octane demo and it renders but there's no files saved in the folder. I think I'll just buy the licensed version and then experiment!
Is there any discount available anywhere or is the price on the website the final deal?
I am not aware of any discounts, but I think it is worth it!
I think so too! Just purchased it, want to get my first animation rendered with it by tomorrow. Now let me try loading it!
teknostorm,
how did your animation turn out? Can we see it?
Yes here are the videos rendered with Octane render in Carrara. The first link is the first one I rendered. Each animation took less than 10 seconds per frame. The opening car logo was rendered without Octane render using Carrara inbuilt renderer -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMxssNWiU-
Cute (although the first link did not work). And an impressive number of hits too!
Thanks Phil! The first one is the most viewed and the first I rendered on Octane Render in Carrara. Here's the correct link -
Wow - 380,000 hits! Nicely done too!
teknostorm,
What video card are you using? 10 sec/frame is reasonable.
I would like to see more before & after comparisons, i.e.
a scene rendered in Carrara and the same one in Octane.
Thanks Phil!
Cal - On this video the opening and ending logo is rendered with Carrara renderer, while the full song video is rendered with Octane Render
Graphics card is GTX 750Ti
Very nice animation.
The difference between Carrara & Octane is not striking, but the Octane does look better.
I haven't been able to try it out yet.....my Octane box isn't working (black screen). =(
But will try it soon as I get the computer up to speed again. I like OctaneRender for Blender,
and hope OR4C will work as well, especially for Carrara terrains & skies.
sadly you do not get Carrara skies in Octane, just Octane sky or you can use a background, the BG will add lighting though so it can be a rendered spherical still or sequence
terrain shaders do not work either
While terrain shaders do not work directly, what I have done is to set up an isometric camera above the landscape and scale its view so that it just covers the landscape and render a fairly high resolution image of that, then apply that as a map onto the terrian. You might still get pixelation when the terrain is very close, but it's not a bad work around. If you might do it often, you could save a little scene just to produce maps from terrains.
I know this thread is a little old, but i was trying to do the same thing. What i do is to export terrain a .obj, check "convert procedural shaders to textures" size 2048 to 2048
It works for me for far landscapes.
very sad to see Teknostorm's channel been removed, I remember his cute childrens songs cartoons.
Lots of views sadly comes with lots of usually false reporting, I know this from personal experience, is one reason I do not put a lot of work or emotional investment in my videos too.