Spot Render Image Series

poorman_65

We desperately need to be able to spot render an image series. The cost of rendering animations of a full scene is horrible. If we could use the Spot Render mechanism for an entire series we could render a Background image and then overlay the Animation. The way things are we can hide most of the scene but that causes the lighting to be different. Or we can reduce the camera view to just the animation area but then there is a challenge to get it line up correctly on the overlay.

DrGonzo62

Yes, that would be a great feature and save tons of time.

Richard Haseltine

You can already render to an image sequence in PNG (or Tiff) format and use that to overlay the renders on a common backdrop image in your video editor.

DrGonzo62

Richard Haseltine said:

You can already render to an image sequence in PNG (or Tiff) format and use that to overlay the renders on a common backdrop image in your video editor.

Yes, the full frame, but not just parts of it. The idea here is to save render time by only spot rendering a sequence of parts of the whole frame and overlay that on top of the full frame animation. To add head movement for example.

WendyLuvsCatz

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/59768/any-way-to-spot-render-an-animation#latest

read my comments there watch on YouTube how Weta and the others do it, it’s called compositing

Richard Haseltine

DrGonzo62 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

You can already render to an image sequence in PNG (or Tiff) format and use that to overlay the renders on a common backdrop image in your video editor.

Yes, the full frame, but not just parts of it. The idea here is to save render time by only spot rendering a sequence of parts of the whole frame and overlay that on top of the full frame animation. To add head movement for example.

You could hide the unwanted parts, though of course that would change the lighting.

DrGonzo62

Richard Haseltine said:

DrGonzo62 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

You can already render to an image sequence in PNG (or Tiff) format and use that to overlay the renders on a common backdrop image in your video editor.

Yes, the full frame, but not just parts of it. The idea here is to save render time by only spot rendering a sequence of parts of the whole frame and overlay that on top of the full frame animation. To add head movement for example.

You could hide the unwanted parts, though of course that would change the lighting.

Unfortunately it does change the lighting and makes the overlay stand out too much. It takes more time to fix this than what was saved in the first place.
I did use a plane with a hole in the middle to hide about 90% of the scene from the camera and only render the head of a model though, and that cut the rendering time of the scene in half. Not bad, but a spot render was still a lot faster. And while we're only talking about minutes gained for a single frame - when rendering 300 or 400 frames that adds up to saving a full day of running my dual 1080 rig.
Sooo, it still would be nice if spot rendering a sequence was an option. :)

Kitsumo

You can use a plane with the iray matte surface applied to it to mask the parts you don't want to render. It would cover up any geometry behind it and leave transparency. In theory, all the objects behind the plane should cast shadows and reflections like normal, but you'd only render the part that the mask isn't covering up.