8 replies to this topic

[kensonuken]

In the process of tradeoff between H and 3delight fur where we love the speed and quality of Polygons being rendered by Mantra but only prob is that the fur is taking more time than it takes in 3delight what it seems to me. But whats ur opinion guys I love everything to be done in Houdini but just for fur reason I need to use 3delight... nothing else..

any suggestions please...

someone rendered fur from Houdini http://houdini-howto...iles/fur_06.jpg have a look its pretty decent looking fur but not a soft fur look.

[ryew]

kensonuken, on 11 June 2012 - 12:48 AM, said:

In the process of tradeoff between H and 3delight fur where we love the speed and quality of Polygons being rendered by Mantra but only prob is that the fur is taking more time than it takes in 3delight what it seems to me. But whats ur opinion guys I love everything to be done in Houdini but just for fur reason I need to use 3delight... nothing else..

any suggestions please...

Have you contacted SideFX support to request help?  This sounds like the sort of technical issue that SideFX engineers would be interested in helping your studio resolve, particularly if it means improving their fur tools.  They have a reputation for going above and beyond the call of duty to help out their paying customers.

[old school]

Usually you hear complaints about Mantra rendered fur being too soft... And with no specific details about the render approach in Mantra...

Which Mantra Render engine are you using? PBR, Micropolygon, Micropolygon+Raytrace or all Raytracing? Better render speeds are had when you pre-render the light shadow maps, turn the shadow generation off and then use Micropolygon rendering.

How are you generating shadows? Deep shadow maps or Raytracing?

Did you try setting some opacity on the fur to get a bit of transparency to soften the shadows?

You can also change the "Pixel Filter" vm_pfilter parameter render property on the Output Driver to make the entire plate render softer as well. Default is Gaussian and 2x2. You can increase this to 3x3 to get a softer look.

The more details you can give wrt Mantra and your fur render tests would be great.

[kensonuken]

here is the info ..
deep shadows 1k
render the shadow maps first and then render the base render with mesh or fur
pixel filter triangle for fur
shading samples 8x8
reducing the opacity at tips to very low giving softer results...
overall i just felt the render speed is relatively slower when compared to 3delight
probably i feel mantra is generating fur procedurally first which is taking more time

[old school]

Quote

shading samples 8x8

What's the shading quality set to? You are rendering with micropolygons. It's worth a try to cut down the shading samples and increase the shading quality for smaller micropolygons and finer hair to resolve the fine curve geometry efficiently.

Quote

overall i just felt the render speed is relatively slower when compared to 3delight
probably i feel mantra is generating fur procedurally first which is taking more time

If you are rendering with micropolygon rendering and no raytracing is happening (no raytrace shadows) then the fur should be dynamically built per bucket.

As for generating the fir first vs dynamically generating fur, the former is usually faster at the expense of memory. The main reason for constructing fur per bucket is for memory reasons as it has a performance hit.

[kensonuken]

shading q is 8 and its micropolygon rendering...

Im just doubtful that im rendering the deep shadows or depth map..

I have the following setting in the lights..
1. Lights having the deepresolve attribute and the dsm file name where I can put the dsm name.

2. In the Mantra output tab added the deepresolve attribute and dsm name but just got confused which one to use...

If its Mantra i think we need to use as many cams as lights? or its enough if we declare the deepreolver in lights itself?

whats the way?..

Edited by kensonuken, 16 June 2012 - 08:04 PM.

[luoqiulin]

hi kensonuken
how do you think attach your 3delight test renderd pic and hip,to let houdini masters render it with mantra to compare it?
i wander know the result too.

matra pbr fur
i like the render result but i would like to know the 3delight's render time

Edited by luoqiulin, 16 June 2012 - 08:06 PM.

[old school]

Sounds like there might be some confusion on how to generate shadow maps from lights and given your above response, I suspect that you are generating the shadow maps and then not using them and triggering ray-traced shadows. Default lights have had the built in ability to automatically pre-generate shadow maps prior to rendering the final image. You do not have to add any of the dsm_* render properties to do this.

All you need to do on your lights is set the Shadow Type to "Depth Shadow Maps". This will expose all the parameters relative to generating deep shadow maps per light.

If you want your lights to generate the shadow maps automatically, enable the "Auto-Generate Shadow Map" toggle. Once generated to disk, you can disable shadow map generation unless you change the geometry of the fur (width) or opacity of the fur.

Once shadow maps are generated, you can still change some of the properties in the Light's Shadow tab: Bias, Quality, Softness, Blur. All these can be changed without re-generating the shadow maps.

Deep Shadow Maps default to opacity maps (deep shadow maps) and this feature is there expressly to render fur.

Shadow Map Resolution and Pixel Samples is a trade-off. Some start off settings anticipating that the furry critter will take up most of the plate:

NTSC or PAL
Resolution: 256 x 256
Pixel Samples 3x3 or 4x4

HD1080:
Resolution: 512 x 512
Pixel Samples: 3 x 3

2k
Resolution 1024 x 1024
Pixel Samples 3 x 3 or 4 x 4

Then go from there.


Sometimes it is critical to track light views on your furry critters. If you look through your lights and your critter is very small in the view, precision is an issue in the shadow map. Many will simply crank the shadow map resolution up to get quality back. By default, the camera view is used to generate the shadow map view. You can add a few view properties that allow you to, while looking through the light, change the shadow map view and track your furry critter. It's all part and parcel of rendering furry critters with deep shadow maps. Tracking the critter allows you to have more precision in the shadow map and keep the resolution and pixel samples in check as these files can get quite large and take some time to generate.

Add the Crop and Screen Window render properties in the Mantra > View tab to your light. While looking through the light you can animate-track the critter with these parameters. A rough track is usually good enough if you are doing quite a few shots.

If you are just doing a few shots, don't bother tracking with light views and just increase the Resolution of the shadow maps.

[kensonuken]

thank you for the detail post but how to get the additional dsm parameters up where they have to be used i use to think to have individual output drivers with dsm parameters added..