Solaris Space Station 2 Animation

brainmuffin

I'm putting the new rig through some paces with another animation in space, this time using the Solaris 2 model. I am interested in understanding how to make it better, in particular the shadows that seem to change every frame. Rendered in Cycles. Model moved via Diffeomorphic.

margrave

The flickering textures look really weird. It almost looks like Z-fighting. Did you check for overlapping meshes?

And are you using the denoiser? IIRC, it can cause errors in animation like that.

As for cosmetic issues, I'd change that big spinning thing in the background to have linear acceleration. Also, the background looks really close. As in, a painted backdrop close.

brainmuffin

Yes, the denoiser is on. Here's frame 100 with it off. I have turned the routation down by half.

margrave

Well, I think the denoiser is what's causing you issues, but all those highlights are pretty bad too.

It could be the lighting is too bright. Try turning down the emissive surfaces.

Also, what are your render settings like?

brainmuffin

margrave said:

Well, I think the denoiser is what's causing you issues, but all those highlights are pretty bad too.

It could be the lighting is too bright. Try turning down the emissive surfaces.

Also, what are your render settings like?

Ok, I'll see what setting are. I may run a render in Studio to compare. As for your other question, the background is an HDRI and only appears close.

Padone

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station. The radar could be slower it draws too much attention. Consider that the bigger a mechanic construction is the slower it will move due to mass and inertia.

Personally I don't notice the texture flickering too much, seems acceptable to me. You may try the animated seed to get a more "grainy" film look. I'd also be curious to see a eevee version that should work great for mechanic assets, I mean the shading is not complex.

margrave

brainmuffin said:

margrave said:

Well, I think the denoiser is what's causing you issues, but all those highlights are pretty bad too.

It could be the lighting is too bright. Try turning down the emissive surfaces.

Also, what are your render settings like?

Ok, I'll see what setting are. I may run a render in Studio to compare. As for your other question, the background is an HDRI and only appears close.

Here's a list of ways to cut down on fireflies, should you decide to turn the denoiser off:

https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/7-ways-get-rid-fireflies

Personally I never use denoisers because I think they make a render look like garbage. Always better to try and get rid of fireflies in the first place.

margrave

Padone said:

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station

I second this, though I'd recommend moving it sideways. If the station moves in parallax while the background remains constant, it'd really help with how close and fake the background looks.

brainmuffin

Padone said:

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station. The radar could be slower it draws too much attention. Consider that the bigger a mechanic construction is the slower it will move due to mass and inertia.

Personally I don't notice the texture flickering too much, seems acceptable to me. You may try the animated seed to get a more "grainy" film look. I'd also be curious to see a eevee version that should work great for mechanic assets, I mean the shading is not complex.

Here is an Eevee render of frame 100, though I have been playing a bit with a couple of suns to improve the lighting. Eevee doesn't seem to do anything with the emitting surfaces.

brainmuffin

margrave said:

Padone said:

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station

I second this, though I'd recommend moving it sideways. If the station moves in parallax while the background remains constant, it'd really help with how close and fake the background looks.

This is experimenting to get the options correct and will be part of a larger video. I do have a flying camera with Solaris One model.

margrave

brainmuffin said:

Padone said:

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station. The radar could be slower it draws too much attention. Consider that the bigger a mechanic construction is the slower it will move due to mass and inertia.

Personally I don't notice the texture flickering too much, seems acceptable to me. You may try the animated seed to get a more "grainy" film look. I'd also be curious to see a eevee version that should work great for mechanic assets, I mean the shading is not complex.

Here is an Eevee render of frame 100, though I have been playing a bit with a couple of suns to improve the lighting. Eevee doesn't seem to do anything with the emitting surfaces.

I believe you have to add an irradiance volume and bake it in order to use emission surfaces with Eevee.

margrave

brainmuffin said:

margrave said:

Padone said:

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station

I second this, though I'd recommend moving it sideways. If the station moves in parallax while the background remains constant, it'd really help with how close and fake the background looks.

This is experimenting to get the options correct and will be part of a larger video. I do have a flying camera with Solaris One model.

Looks better, but those artifacts on the backside... Ouch.

I'd recommend turning off the denoiser and the emissive surfaces, then swapping the sun lamps for area lamps. Crank the size up so they're huge (bigger than the station) and give them a faint blue-purple glow. Give the whole station a barely-perceptible ambient light coverage. Then turn the emissive surfaces up till just before they start exploding into fireflies.

brainmuffin

margrave said:

brainmuffin said:

Padone said:

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station. The radar could be slower it draws too much attention. Consider that the bigger a mechanic construction is the slower it will move due to mass and inertia.

Personally I don't notice the texture flickering too much, seems acceptable to me. You may try the animated seed to get a more "grainy" film look. I'd also be curious to see a eevee version that should work great for mechanic assets, I mean the shading is not complex.

Here is an Eevee render of frame 100, though I have been playing a bit with a couple of suns to improve the lighting. Eevee doesn't seem to do anything with the emitting surfaces.

I believe you have to add an irradiance volume and bake it in order to use emission surfaces with Eevee.

I may look into this more. The Eevee frame only took about 20 seconds to render, instead of the just over 2 minutes for Cycles. I may also try an import again with Diffeo, but this time with Eevee selected to see if that changes anything. On my previous machine, Eevee was so slow and look so horrible, I didn't bother.

margrave

Eevee is basically a video game renderer. It doesn't do the fancy stuff by design, so it won't look nearly as good as an unbiased renderer without heavy pre-processing (like an irradiance volume).

Padone

Yep you have to bake first the global illumination in eevee, including emitting surfaces. But, since this is a space scene you hardly get global illumination so direct lights may work fine enough, that eevee can handle. Personally I don't notice those artifacts too much, @margrave is more sensible than me.

Remember that the eye is essentially drawn by moving objects and lights so you can catch the audience attention where you want it with this.

General advice for animation and shooting. Think at it as it was real. Where is the camera binded to, what the space station is doing and why, how large is it ? The real radar for example would probably slow before rest then turning back because of mass and inertia, that's ease-in/out, same for the main door.

https://wave.video/blog/12-basic-principles-of-animation/

https://www.studiobinder.com/filmmaking-techniques-camera-movements/

brainmuffin

Thanks for the tips. The swing around animation was made on my older rig with only 8GB of RAM. Several concessions had to be made to get it to fit. Now I have 64 GB and looking forward to expanding a bit.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

Nice work, @brainmuffin! These are some things I think would make it better:

For something as large as a space station, I'd use some DoF.

From the scale, you could actually just calculate the proper angular velocity of the rotating part to give a normal 9.8m/s2 simulated gravity. It does seem a little fast, though.

The radar, to me, is out of place; it belongs in a WWII video. Modern radar uses phased arrays.

There's really no way around the denoising artefacts, as it was never guaranteed to be temporally stable. But you could get away with some stills, as below:

The scene composition seems a little off. The station itself is important, and the chief action is the arrival of the cargo ship. You tried to do exposition of both of those important objects at the same time, and I don't think it works. The cargo ship isn't even visible during the most nerve-wracking part of the approach. I think it'd be better should do some exposition of the station with a couple of stills showing it's important features, especially the landing port. And then show the actually landing with the cargo ship always visible.

I don't know how far down you're going with this, but how does the viewer know it's a cargo delivery? Why is this cargo delivery important? Will it effect somone/something he cares about? What are the stakes? What should the viewer be wondering whether is going to happen next, i.e. what will keep him watching in order to find out?

Whatever you're aiming for, it looks pretty cool so far...

brainmuffin

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

Nice work, @brainmuffin! These are some things I think would make it better:

For something as large as a space station, I'd use some DoF.

From the scale, you could actually just calculate the proper angular velocity of the rotating part to give a normal 9.8m/s2 simulated gravity. It does seem a little fast, though.

The radar, to me, is out of place; it belongs in a WWII video. Modern radar uses phased arrays.

There's really no way around the denoising artefacts, as it was never guaranteed to be temporally stable. But you could get away with some stills, as below:

The scene composition seems a little off. The station itself is important, and the chief action is the arrival of the cargo ship. You tried to do exposition of both of those important objects at the same time, and I don't think it works. The cargo ship isn't even visible during the most nerve-wracking part of the approach. I think it'd be better should do some exposition of the station with a couple of stills showing it's important features, especially the landing port. And then show the actually landing with the cargo ship always visible.

I don't know how far down you're going with this, but how does the viewer know it's a cargo delivery? Why is this cargo delivery important? Will it effect somone/something he cares about? What are the stakes? What should the viewer be wondering whether is going to happen next, i.e. what will keep him watching in order to find out?

Whatever you're aiming for, it looks pretty cool so far...

All these questions will be answered once I learn how to make good renders and the entire trailer gets put together.

brainmuffin

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

Nice work, @brainmuffin! These are some things I think would make it better:

For something as large as a space station, I'd use some DoF.

From the scale, you could actually just calculate the proper angular velocity of the rotating part to give a normal 9.8m/s2 simulated gravity. It does seem a little fast, though.

The radar, to me, is out of place; it belongs in a WWII video. Modern radar uses phased arrays.

There's really no way around the denoising artefacts, as it was never guaranteed to be temporally stable. But you could get away with some stills, as below:

The scene composition seems a little off. The station itself is important, and the chief action is the arrival of the cargo ship. You tried to do exposition of both of those important objects at the same time, and I don't think it works. The cargo ship isn't even visible during the most nerve-wracking part of the approach. I think it'd be better should do some exposition of the station with a couple of stills showing it's important features, especially the landing port. And then show the actually landing with the cargo ship always visible.

I don't know how far down you're going with this, but how does the viewer know it's a cargo delivery? Why is this cargo delivery important? Will it effect somone/something he cares about? What are the stakes? What should the viewer be wondering whether is going to happen next, i.e. what will keep him watching in order to find out?

Whatever you're aiming for, it looks pretty cool so far...

This is another experiment relative to the narrative, though the larger space ship isn't moving yet in the outside view. This bridge is a set and not directly related to the spaceship construction set model for the large cargo ship. Next I'm returning to getting characters over from Studio properly so they can be animated. I've yet to get those to come over without messing it up.

 

TheMysteryIsThePoint

brainmuffin said:

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

Nice work, @brainmuffin! These are some things I think would make it better:

For something as large as a space station, I'd use some DoF.

From the scale, you could actually just calculate the proper angular velocity of the rotating part to give a normal 9.8m/s2 simulated gravity. It does seem a little fast, though.

The radar, to me, is out of place; it belongs in a WWII video. Modern radar uses phased arrays.

There's really no way around the denoising artefacts, as it was never guaranteed to be temporally stable. But you could get away with some stills, as below:

The scene composition seems a little off. The station itself is important, and the chief action is the arrival of the cargo ship. You tried to do exposition of both of those important objects at the same time, and I don't think it works. The cargo ship isn't even visible during the most nerve-wracking part of the approach. I think it'd be better should do some exposition of the station with a couple of stills showing it's important features, especially the landing port. And then show the actually landing with the cargo ship always visible.

I don't know how far down you're going with this, but how does the viewer know it's a cargo delivery? Why is this cargo delivery important? Will it effect somone/something he cares about? What are the stakes? What should the viewer be wondering whether is going to happen next, i.e. what will keep him watching in order to find out?

Whatever you're aiming for, it looks pretty cool so far...

This is another experiment relative to the narrative, though the larger space ship isn't moving yet in the outside view. This bridge is a set and not directly related to the spaceship construction set model for the large cargo ship. Next I'm returning to getting characters over from Studio properly so they can be animated. I've yet to get those to come over without messing it up.

Looks great.

Yeah, that can be a challenge, even more so when you've got an obsession for details like I do and the slightest deviation drives you crazy. I couldn't accept the slightest difference in subd between Daz and Blender even though it's hardly noticeable, and that's what drew me towards Alembic.

Looking forward to seeing it when you succeed.

Padone

brainmuffin said:

This is another experiment relative to the narrative

Again .. absolutely avoid a fixed camera, it makes the scene dead. The camera is the first actor you have to deal with. How you deal with the camera alone can kill your footage or vastly improve it.

If you need a camera "still" just zoom in a little or pan a little during the shot.

margrave

brainmuffin said:

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

Nice work, @brainmuffin! These are some things I think would make it better:

For something as large as a space station, I'd use some DoF.

From the scale, you could actually just calculate the proper angular velocity of the rotating part to give a normal 9.8m/s2 simulated gravity. It does seem a little fast, though.

The radar, to me, is out of place; it belongs in a WWII video. Modern radar uses phased arrays.

There's really no way around the denoising artefacts, as it was never guaranteed to be temporally stable. But you could get away with some stills, as below:

The scene composition seems a little off. The station itself is important, and the chief action is the arrival of the cargo ship. You tried to do exposition of both of those important objects at the same time, and I don't think it works. The cargo ship isn't even visible during the most nerve-wracking part of the approach. I think it'd be better should do some exposition of the station with a couple of stills showing it's important features, especially the landing port. And then show the actually landing with the cargo ship always visible.

I don't know how far down you're going with this, but how does the viewer know it's a cargo delivery? Why is this cargo delivery important? Will it effect somone/something he cares about? What are the stakes? What should the viewer be wondering whether is going to happen next, i.e. what will keep him watching in order to find out?

Whatever you're aiming for, it looks pretty cool so far...

This is another experiment relative to the narrative, though the larger space ship isn't moving yet in the outside view. This bridge is a set and not directly related to the spaceship construction set model for the large cargo ship. Next I'm returning to getting characters over from Studio properly so they can be animated. I've yet to get those to come over without messing it up.

Something about this shot just screams "miniature" to me. It's so flat, so orthographic, it looks like you're peering into a dollhouse or a diorama.

Maybe lower the camera to eye-level and decrease the focal length to add some curvature to the lens?

brainmuffin

margrave said:

brainmuffin said:

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

Nice work, @brainmuffin! These are some things I think would make it better:

For something as large as a space station, I'd use some DoF.

From the scale, you could actually just calculate the proper angular velocity of the rotating part to give a normal 9.8m/s2 simulated gravity. It does seem a little fast, though.

The radar, to me, is out of place; it belongs in a WWII video. Modern radar uses phased arrays.

There's really no way around the denoising artefacts, as it was never guaranteed to be temporally stable. But you could get away with some stills, as below:

The scene composition seems a little off. The station itself is important, and the chief action is the arrival of the cargo ship. You tried to do exposition of both of those important objects at the same time, and I don't think it works. The cargo ship isn't even visible during the most nerve-wracking part of the approach. I think it'd be better should do some exposition of the station with a couple of stills showing it's important features, especially the landing port. And then show the actually landing with the cargo ship always visible.

I don't know how far down you're going with this, but how does the viewer know it's a cargo delivery? Why is this cargo delivery important? Will it effect somone/something he cares about? What are the stakes? What should the viewer be wondering whether is going to happen next, i.e. what will keep him watching in order to find out?

Whatever you're aiming for, it looks pretty cool so far...

This is another experiment relative to the narrative, though the larger space ship isn't moving yet in the outside view. This bridge is a set and not directly related to the spaceship construction set model for the large cargo ship. Next I'm returning to getting characters over from Studio properly so they can be animated. I've yet to get those to come over without messing it up.

Something about this shot just screams "miniature" to me. It's so flat, so orthographic, it looks like you're peering into a dollhouse or a diorama.

Maybe lower the camera to eye-level and decrease the focal length to add some curvature to the lens?

Yeah, I can see that. I'll keep that in mind when I start rendering for editing. This bridge set is a bit on in itself though.

This is the set in question. Perhaps I need to pull back and use a wider angle.

https://www.daz3d.com/sci-fi-starship-bridge-volume-1

brainmuffin

margrave said:

brainmuffin said:

margrave said:

Padone said:

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station

I second this, though I'd recommend moving it sideways. If the station moves in parallax while the background remains constant, it'd really help with how close and fake the background looks.

This is experimenting to get the options correct and will be part of a larger video. I do have a flying camera with Solaris One model.

Looks better, but those artifacts on the backside... Ouch.

I'd recommend turning off the denoiser and the emissive surfaces, then swapping the sun lamps for area lamps. Crank the size up so they're huge (bigger than the station) and give them a faint blue-purple glow. Give the whole station a barely-perceptible ambient light coverage. Then turn the emissive surfaces up till just before they start exploding into fireflies.

I must have misunderstood something as the fireflies are far worse now with area lights. I'll read this again, slower.

brainmuffin

margrave said:

brainmuffin said:

margrave said:

Padone said:

Main cosmetic advice, you may move the camera a tad during animation to avoid the "freeze" look. Like moving toward or away from the space station

I second this, though I'd recommend moving it sideways. If the station moves in parallax while the background remains constant, it'd really help with how close and fake the background looks.

This is experimenting to get the options correct and will be part of a larger video. I do have a flying camera with Solaris One model.

Looks better, but those artifacts on the backside... Ouch.

I'd recommend turning off the denoiser and the emissive surfaces, then swapping the sun lamps for area lamps. Crank the size up so they're huge (bigger than the station) and give them a faint blue-purple glow. Give the whole station a barely-perceptible ambient light coverage. Then turn the emissive surfaces up till just before they start exploding into fireflies.

Turning off the emmissive surfaces is proving to be more difficult than I'd think. I may have to do something in Studio first, then reconvert.