Animation frames! Help me please

Started by mched005, April 19, 2017, 03:23:07 PM

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mched005

Hi everyone,

I have to do an animation video for a class, something I have never done before.
I started an animation and when I go to render, animation, it shows up that the video has 900 frames!!!!!!
Each frame is taking like an hour or more to render!
I'm in desperate mode, I cant wait so long for each to frame to render. It will never finish!
I attached an image.. I just need to make a video out of this video showing my model. :(

Any help please?


-UPDATE..
I selected render with maximum time trying to see if that would help minimize time and changed it to 2 hours and a half.. and the animation video came up horrible.. (attaching video and screen shot)


Please help me, any advice on settings or whatever it is I would appreciate it.. I have until Thursday night to develop this video :(
Thanks :(

HaroldL

Does each frame really need an hour to render? What are your computer specs?

Here's what I would do . . .
1 - Turn on the Heads Up display (letter H) if it's not already on.
2 - Scrub through the animation to find a frame that may be the hardest to render, then Lock the camera.
3 - Watch the Heads Up display to see how long it takes to res up to a "good enough" image.
4 - Unlock the camera and reset the animation to the start.
5 - Use the time from the heads up display in the "Per Frame" time setting.
6 - Go for a walk, it's gonna take some time. Even if you render at one minute per frame that's 900 minutes - 15 hours

BTW, 2.5 hours max time for the Total duration is only 10 seconds per frame - that would not look good.

mched005

Quote from: HaroldL on April 19, 2017, 08:45:23 PM
Does each frame really need an hour to render? What are your computer specs?

Here's what I would do . . .
1 - Turn on the Heads Up display (letter H) if it's not already on.
2 - Scrub through the animation to find a frame that may be the hardest to render, then Lock the camera.
3 - Watch the Heads Up display to see how long it takes to res up to a "good enough" image.
4 - Unlock the camera and reset the animation to the start.
5 - Use the time from the heads up display in the "Per Frame" time setting.
6 - Go for a walk, it's gonna take some time. Even if you render at one minute per frame that's 900 minutes - 15 hours

BTW, 2.5 hours max time for the Total duration is only 10 seconds per frame - that would not look good.


Thanks for responding :)

Im new to keyshot.. I usually render but never had done any sort of animations..
The video final time should be only 15 seconds, that's why I couldnt undertand why does it takes like 40 minutes per frame to render..
Thanks for the tips, I will try them :)

A long night for me until I get this right for school finals!

Really appreciate!

INNEO_MWo

Quote from: mched005 on April 19, 2017, 09:59:10 PM
...

Im new to keyshot.. I usually render but never had done any sort of animations..
The video final time should be only 15 seconds, that's why I couldnt undertand why does it takes like 40 minutes per frame to render..


...


There are several ways to speed up the rendering if your machine is to slow. Most things can be controlled inside KeyShot. And for starters, some things can be "kind of foggy" to find the right options.
I would start to rebuild this scene and start with simple materials my machine could handle fast. If you start a new scene and place the first parts you can see the FPS value in the heads-up display (H key). This value is a speed indicator. 'Cause some materials needs more calculation than other. So if you use complex materials like thin film or dielectric or translucent (advanced) with sub surface scattering, you'll see a very low FPS value that needs more CPU power or longer render time.
So start with simple materials, try to use the HDRI environment instead of physical lights, decrease the usage of roughness if not necessary, create test renders and animation sequences in a lower resolution like 800x450 pixel ('cause a doubled resolution causes 4 times more render time), ... !


Luxion shared tons of helpful tutorials at their YouTube channel.


Reduce the frame rate in the animation bar to 30 FPS - or - are 60 FPS really necessary?




If you still need more CPU power, you can use a render farm service.






hope that helps


Cheers
Marco

mched005

Quote from: HaroldL on April 19, 2017, 08:45:23 PM
Does each frame really need an hour to render? What are your computer specs?

Here's what I would do . . .
1 - Turn on the Heads Up display (letter H) if it's not already on.
2 - Scrub through the animation to find a frame that may be the hardest to render, then Lock the camera.
3 - Watch the Heads Up display to see how long it takes to res up to a "good enough" image.
4 - Unlock the camera and reset the animation to the start.
5 - Use the time from the heads up display in the "Per Frame" time setting.
6 - Go for a walk, it's gonna take some time. Even if you render at one minute per frame that's 900 minutes - 15 hours

BTW, 2.5 hours max time for the Total duration is only 10 seconds per frame - that would not look good.


update:

I tried those steps and on the heads up display it takes like 15 minutes or more for it to render...
If I render the animation it gives me 900 frames for a 15 sec animation. If i use 15 minutes for it to render it will take 3 days :(
Is there any way to minimize the amount of frames?

thank u

mched005

Quote from: MWo on April 20, 2017, 12:30:16 AM
Quote from: mched005 on April 19, 2017, 09:59:10 PM
...

Im new to keyshot.. I usually render but never had done any sort of animations..
The video final time should be only 15 seconds, that's why I couldnt undertand why does it takes like 40 minutes per frame to render..


...


There are several ways to speed up the rendering if your machine is to slow. Most things can be controlled inside KeyShot. And for starters, some things can be "kind of foggy" to find the right options.
I would start to rebuild this scene and start with simple materials my machine could handle fast. If you start a new scene and place the first parts you can see the FPS value in the heads-up display (H key). This value is a speed indicator. 'Cause some materials needs more calculation than other. So if you use complex materials like thin film or dielectric or translucent (advanced) with sub surface scattering, you'll see a very low FPS value that needs more CPU power or longer render time.
So start with simple materials, try to use the HDRI environment instead of physical lights, decrease the usage of roughness if not necessary, create test renders and animation sequences in a lower resolution like 800x450 pixel ('cause a doubled resolution causes 4 times more render time), ... !


Luxion shared tons of helpful tutorials at their YouTube channel.


Reduce the frame rate in the animation bar to 30 FPS - or - are 60 FPS really necessary?




If you still need more CPU power, you can use a render farm service.






hope that helps


Cheers
Marco


Marco thanks for the response :)

I tried using the settings on the heads up, but each frame run for 15 minutes to look close to proper view..
I reduced the video time to 10 seconds instead of 15 seconds, and that reduced the amount of frames from 900 to 600.. But still if I do 15 min per frame it will take like 3 days :(
I will try changing the materials to regular colors instead of textured material.. and changing the environment as well..

Thanks for the advice  :) I will try them all! hope it works for me!

Esben Oxholm

#6
Rendering animations are a time-expensive task no matter what.

Instead of using max time, I would suggest you to use max samples. Find the needed value using the Heads-up-display, like with the time.
By using max samples you ensure that the quality of the frames (amount of noise, etc.) will be consistent across the entire animation.

If rendering takes too long on your own setup, there's always the possibility to use renderfarms. Check out http://www.3dotp.com/ and http://clusterfarm.eu/

mched005

Quote from: MWo on April 20, 2017, 12:30:16 AM
Quote from: mched005 on April 19, 2017, 09:59:10 PM
...

Im new to keyshot.. I usually render but never had done any sort of animations..
The video final time should be only 15 seconds, that's why I couldnt undertand why does it takes like 40 minutes per frame to render..


...


There are several ways to speed up the rendering if your machine is to slow. Most things can be controlled inside KeyShot. And for starters, some things can be "kind of foggy" to find the right options.
I would start to rebuild this scene and start with simple materials my machine could handle fast. If you start a new scene and place the first parts you can see the FPS value in the heads-up display (H key). This value is a speed indicator. 'Cause some materials needs more calculation than other. So if you use complex materials like thin film or dielectric or translucent (advanced) with sub surface scattering, you'll see a very low FPS value that needs more CPU power or longer render time.
So start with simple materials, try to use the HDRI environment instead of physical lights, decrease the usage of roughness if not necessary, create test renders and animation sequences in a lower resolution like 800x450 pixel ('cause a doubled resolution causes 4 times more render time), ... !


Luxion shared tons of helpful tutorials at their YouTube channel.


Reduce the frame rate in the animation bar to 30 FPS - or - are 60 FPS really necessary?




If you still need more CPU power, you can use a render farm service.






hope that helps


Cheers
Marco


I have 550 frames now and its taking approx 4 mins per frame with change in materiality.. it will take 40 hours to finish 550 frames if we do the math.. Im so confused :( I dont understand whats wrong?

mched005

Quote from: Esben Oxholm on April 20, 2017, 04:46:41 AM
Rendering animations are a time-expensive task no matter what.

Instead of using max time, I would suggest you to use max samples. Find the needed value using the Heads-up-display, like with the time.
By using max samples you ensure that the quality of the frames (amount of noise, etc.) will be consistent across the entire animation.

If rendering takes too long on your own setup, there's always the possibility to use renderfarms. Check out http://www.3dotp.com/ and http://clusterfarm.net/

Thanks for the response.. Im pretty sure it takes time, but for a 10 second animation 50 hours its just crazy I think... If each frame its taking approx 3 minutes to render, it will literally take 40 hours..
There has to be something wrong with my settings maybe or something that I cant figure out. My computer should be able to handle it, its a good one bought for school (still paying it)..

designgestalt

#9
hey mched005,
one of the suggestions here was to reduce the framerate per second, which I also would highly recommend !
you wont need 60 frames per second (which comes at 10 seconds to 600 frames!). if you reduce to 30 frames per second, you still have a "fluent" solution, and you cut your rendertime in half!
in your animation window, there is a small window right next to the "Animation Wizard" button. this is where you can adjust how many frames per second you would want to have!
so this way, you could still stay with your 15 second animation and would end up with 450 frames, which are still fewer frames then your 10 sec animation.
did you also try, as Marco suggested, to lower the size of your video to next lower level ?
cheers
designgestalt

INNEO_MWo

I have one tip extra:
If you use background render mode instead of standard and let the KeyShot windows keep paused, the rendering for each frame would run faster. This can bring up to 30% faster renderings because the render window gets an own windows process that can be handled with separately priority.

Cheers
Marco

Will Gibbons

Quote from: MWo on April 20, 2017, 06:06:13 AM
I have one tip extra:
If you use background render mode instead of standard and let the KeyShot windows keep paused, the rendering for each frame would run faster. This can bring up to 30% faster renderings because the render window gets an own windows process that can be handled with separately priority.

Cheers
Marco

Hi Marco, I don't think this is correct. Whenever you use the standard rendering mode, KeyShot's Real-time window gets paused. The fastest rendering should come from KeyShot's standard rendering mode with 100% of cores allotted (which can be adjusted in the render output dialogue)

Will Gibbons

Quote from: mched005 on April 19, 2017, 03:23:07 PM
Please help me, any advice on settings or whatever it is I would appreciate it.. I have until Thursday night to develop this video :(
Thanks :(

I wish I found this sooner. Here's some overarching tips you can use next time you create an animation. By making these changes in this order, you will speed up your rendering process:
1. Use a faster computer, or a network or a render farm service (very cost-effective)
2. Reduce the resolution (size of animation)
3. Don't render with DoF or Motion Blur
4. Reduce the FPS
5. Avoid using physical lights if possible
6. Don't render with caustics or global illumination if you don't need them (ie. no transparent objects)
7. Use faster materials (use the H key trick previously mentioned)
8. Render in performance mode if you want noise-free images but are okay with sacrificing realism

With animations, you always need to make trade-offs between time vs quality. Even the film industry struggles with this. If you're going to render an animation, the time spent planning and optimizing a scene can save you time and money down the road. Hopefully this is helpful for the future.

Robb63

Hi HaroldH,
If you are only rendering at 1280 x 800, then you are only doing a HD animation. The standard for this is 30 frames per second. That will cut your render time in half (as stated elsewhere).

Can you post a screen grab of your lighting , and your render settings? This will help us to comment on what can be turned down.

Also, in addition to "Video Output" I would check the "Frames Output" box. I've seen some instances where there can be a video error after all of that render time. If you have the frames as well you can always create an animation in After Effect, QuickTime, etc... I prefer this as it gives me more options to create/edit the final animation.

Animations are huge render time sucks no doubt. That's why the big studios have internal render farms. I read an article stating that even with their own powerful render farm, Monsters University took 29 hours per frame to render.

Since your are a student, if you send me the final scene once it's optimized, I can throw it on our render farm and let it render overnight if you'd like. We only have a small farm here at work, but it takes my renders that take an hour and a half on my computer, and renders them in 2-3 minutes.

Good luck!

INNEO_MWo

Quote from: Will Gibbons on April 20, 2017, 07:11:10 AM
Quote from: MWo on April 20, 2017, 06:06:13 AM
I have one tip extra:
If you use background render mode instead of standard and let the KeyShot windows keep paused, the rendering for each frame would run faster. This can bring up to 30% faster renderings because the render window gets an own windows process that can be handled with separately priority.

Cheers
Marco

Hi Marco, I don't think this is correct. Whenever you use the standard rendering mode, KeyShot's Real-time window gets paused. The fastest rendering should come from KeyShot's standard rendering mode with 100% of cores allotted (which can be adjusted in the render output dialogue)

Hello Will.

My intention was to help the user(s) and share my ideas. I did several test since hyperShot times. The render speed is not always 30% faster in background mode - it depends on several parameters. Sometime you earn a few seconds and sometimes you get some minutes. (But saving 1 minute each frame by 300 frames is saving some hours)
My last test was a few month ago and I didn't test this scenario in every release. So maybe I'm wrong with the current release? But, I use background mode every time.

So please excuse me if I posted something wrong. Maybe one of the dev team can add a clear comment to this?

And Will: I thank you very much for your last webinar videos. The work of you and the crew (Richard, Dries, Rex, Esben, ...) is very helpful!

Cheers
Marco