Nearing professional results, but need some help with render issues at edges

[gregsage]

Here's a piece of an upcoming music video background:

<a href="https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=45513447&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=01AAEA" target="_blank">https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=45513447&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=01AAEA</a>

password is "maze"

It's not good enough to include in the video as is since there are some nasty artifacts.

First, I made a couple of mistakes, so the superfast zoom at the beginning and slight frame break on the left at 11sec or so have already been fixed.

The stuttering of the video is not in my render, but seems to be due to bitrate issues when I dumbed it down for quick upload on vimeo.  My original render is smooth motion always.

The issue I'm having is at the borders.  Each "window" as it comes up gets very bright when it's on the edge, then suddenly gets darker as it moves away from the edge.  Also, the walls themselves seem to have a bright specular hotspot to them when they are at the edge, then go back to normal when they go away from the edge.

I didn't notice this on my individual renders or tests, but it looks awful when viewed in movie format.  It's very distracting, and destroys the overall smoothness of the video.

Why is this happening?  Is it because the FOV is too large, and so those spots are too near the camera or acting as focal points for the lights somehow?

Is it partly because of the fog?

Something else?  It's only at the edges.  If I zoom in and shave off the edges, it looks much better.

Not sure what to do here as it took 3 weeks to render, and it's basically useless other than being a learning exercise.  If I can fix these issues, I'll redo it and include it in the video.

[cKleinhuis]

[morbidorbits]

Here's a piece of an upcoming music video background:

I think you linked to the wrong video  :


~Edit to remove video

[gregsage]

I think you linked to the wrong video  :

Haha.  Oops.  Link fixed.  Too much in the old clipboard.  

<a href="https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=45513447&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=01AAEA" target="_blank">https://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=45513447&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=01AAEA</a>

password: "maze"

All the shifting on the left and right of the screen at 52 sec to 1min, for instance, is very distracting.  It seems at first glance to be due to the fog, but if you look at the left around 54sec or so, you'll see it's the OUTside of the bubbles too that lights up as they are near the edge, then dull back down, so not just the inside of each room that's filled with fog.  Is this still a fog issue?

Is there any way to use the fog that doesn't suffer from this effect?  Half of what works about this particular journey in other ways is the fog as it balances out the positive/negative space and color scheme.

I'm not sure if the shadows are quite as they should be either.  Around 40 sec as you pass through the window into the orb, for instance, and each of the walls has a shadow that sweeps across the inner room, it can be a bit distracting as well.  Would a different ambient shadow setting help this?  I'm familiar with the general lighting concepts and terms, but still getting used to mandelbulb.

If I haven't mentioned, this is my first time using the program... or any fractal generator for that matter.

[cKleinhuis]

rendering quality is quite impressive, smooth rendering, .... but .... YOU NEED MORE FRAMES AT LEAST 25 per second

[gregsage]

rendering quality is quite impressive, smooth rendering, .... but .... YOU NEED MORE FRAMES AT LEAST 25 per second

It's rendered at 30... and took nearly a month to render.  It's my first time posting anything on a video site, though, and just wanted to dumb it down to vimeo's 500mb limit quickly and easily.  I thought I had set AE to just limit the at a constant bit rate to hit that mark without altering the basics (like frame rate)

Anyway, I'm sure I need to dig in a bit more to the final render settings (the video will be uploaded at 1080p on Youtube), and I may have been hasty about just tossing any old settings at it to get it posted quickly, but the issues I'm talking about appear even at my my month long uncompressed render where each frame is 4mb.

[DarkBeam]

Looks very cool imo

[morbidorbits]

The issue I'm having is at the borders.  Each "window" as it comes up gets very bright when it's on the edge, then suddenly gets darker as it moves away from the edge.  Also, the walls themselves seem to have a bright specular hotspot to them when they are at the edge, then go back to normal when they go away from the edge.

I am also pretty new but I have noticed the same issue in my first animation.  I think that this could be caused by the fact that when M3D is rendering the moving animation and/or lights and shadows it only renders the area in view and not anything outside of that boundary.  It doesn't know what is outside of this boundary so doesn't know how to calculate shadows and lights correctly for this area.  This behaviour is not like a standard 3d application where you have a defined model and environment to move around in, where the software does know what is on the outside of the visible frame/border.  It makes sense to me anyway!

If I'm correct and the cause is the unknown 'outside of the boundary', I would suggest a possible workaround would be to render too big (say 100px or 200px extra on each of the four sides) and then crop the finished animation (assuming video software can do this - it sounds easy to me!).

Oh - and are you actually Greg Sage?  I love The Wipers and I just got the box set CD for £12 - I was well chuffed!!!!!

[Alef]

Realy nice work. The most i love start and end of the video. Yeah, edge deffect is seen. Maybe alsou a bitt too chemical colours/ shine, but that is just my taste, this nice work indeed.

[gregsage]

Not sure who Greg Sage is... Just one of many names I did some test blogs under.

Colors are maybe even a bit de-saturated for my purposes if you can believe it... again, it's a background for a music video.  Looking for maximum visual impact as opposed to realism.

I may well dumb the DE way down, though, and go for a thicker, bolder look overall with less detail.  The detail gets all muddy anyway on youtube when someone is viewing at lower res.

As for edge theory... interesting.  Anyone else got a take on this?  I had considered doing a couple hundred extra pixels on each border, but I shudder to think what my render times will be.  This already took nearly a month.

Speaking of which, anyone got a good reference for how to zero in on a sweet spot for quality vs. render time?  I've done a good deal of experimentation, but not exactly sure I need all my settings.  Perhaps I should just post a param, and ask for help zeroing in on how to get the max reduction in render time with minimum loss of quality.

Anyway, as for the edges, there seem to be two things going on.  One is like a flash in each room as it passes, it's bright, then goes back to duller orange glow as it moves from edge.  Not sure if this is due to extreme wide camera angle and some sort of quick flip past maximally bright viewing angle for each room, or just something to do with the fog vs. distance, or...

Other and possibly related issue is the brightness of the walls, and the fact that they seem to get what appears to be a bright specular sheen to them when they are at the edge.  Not always, but it's clearly visible when they do.

[morbidorbits]

Not sure who Greg Sage is... Just one of many names I did some test blogs under.

Colors are maybe even a bit de-saturated for my purposes if you can believe it... again, it's a background for a music video.  Looking for maximum visual impact as opposed to realism.

I may well dumb the DE way down, though, and go for a thicker, bolder look overall with less detail.  The detail gets all muddy anyway on youtube when someone is viewing at lower res.

As for edge theory... interesting.  Anyone else got a take on this?  I had considered doing a couple hundred extra pixels on each border, but I shudder to think what my render times will be.  This already took nearly a month.

Speaking of which, anyone got a good reference for how to zero in on a sweet spot for quality vs. render time?  I've done a good deal of experimentation, but not exactly sure I need all my settings.  Perhaps I should just post a param, and ask for help zeroing in on how to get the max reduction in render time with minimum loss of quality.

Anyway, as for the edges, there seem to be two things going on.  One is like a flash in each room as it passes, it's bright, then goes back to duller orange glow as it moves from edge.  Not sure if this is due to extreme wide camera angle and some sort of quick flip past maximally bright viewing angle for each room, or just something to do with the fog vs. distance, or...

Other and possibly related issue is the brightness of the walls, and the fact that they seem to get what appears to be a bright specular sheen to them when they are at the edge.  Not always, but it's clearly visible when they do.

Greg Sage is an old punk rock musician who influenced lots of other bands (Nirvana being one).  His band were called the wipers.

Back to my edge theory... The flash of light and dark is caused by there momentarily being no object (outside the boundary) to cast shadows, therefore it is bright.... then dark once the object is rendered (inside the boundary now) and casting shadows.

[gregsage]

Well, if that's the case, it's a real bummer, because some of the objects casting shadows are quite large... and therefore could be a lot more than 200 pixels influence... although that would alleviate most of it.

[Jesse]

The issue is based on the SSAO (screen-space-ambient-occlusion) that relies only on the visible image content, the DEAO is indepent from the image content but needs longer to render for most cases, depends on how many rays you calculate, the length of rays and the rendertime for the formula.
And becuase the DEAO works with DE's (distance estimates calculated from the formula) and some formulas might have not that good DE's, you might have spotty artifacts on some formulas, but not necessarily.  You got to try out.

[morbidorbits]

The issue is based on the SSAO (screen-space-ambient-occlusion) that relies only on the visible image content, the DEAO is indepent from the image content but needs longer to render for most cases, depends on how many rays you calculate, the length of rays and the rendertime for the formula.
And becuase the DEAO works with DE's (distance estimates calculated from the formula) and some formulas might have not that good DE's, you might have spotty artifacts on some formulas, but not necessarily.  You got to try out.

Jesse, as I am a relative noob to M3d can you (or anyone else) explain briefly how to switch between the 2 types of AO?  I searched the forum but I couldn't see this.
Thanks 

[morbidorbits]

Jesse, as I am a relative noob to M3d can you (or anyone else) explain briefly how to switch between the 2 types of AO?  I searched the forum but I couldn't see this.
Thanks 

I found it!!

On the Post Processing tab NOT the lighting tab  :

Thanks