Any way to spot render an animation?

SnowSultan

I was hoping to be able to animate just the eyes or fingers of a figure in a larger scene and then combine either the movie file or the image sequence in postwork over a full render, but it doesn't seem possible. Switching spot render to New Window only renders the one scene, and changing the Aspect Frame to try and frame the part you want animated resizes the camera view.

I suppose the only way would be to do spot renders one by one, moving the animation forward one frame at a time, but...yeah, that's not pleasant.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

nicstt

There's a spot render tool next but one to the render button; you just draw the box around the area you want to render.

bigh

just render from x to y - you don't have to go from first to last frame

SnowSultan

nicstt said:

There's a spot render tool next but one to the render button; you just draw the box around the area you want to render.

Yes, I mentioned that I'd tried that.

 

 

bigh said:

just render from x to y - you don't have to go from first to last frame

That's not quite what I mean. I want to render multiple frames of a specific area of the scene, not a specific set of full frames.

Design Anvil - Razor42

The only way I can think of doing this would be to either - A hide everything else in the scene except for tthe parts that you want to focus on in the spot area. Not really a spot render in essence but it should be quite time efficent as it will only be rendering what you need.

Or to create a new camera that focuses only on the area you want. This could be tricky depending on your original camera settings as things like the apect ratio and the camera focal range may make things not look right. 

SnowSultan

Thanks for replying, at least I wasn't overlooking a 'normal' method.  :)  Hiding as much as possible would definitely help at least.

Ruphuss

mcasual has a script for this

hiding all but....

Taoz

What's the purpose - to save time by rendering only part of the scene rather than it all?

jestmart

I wonder if instead of hiding stuff you placed a plane primitive with a hole in front of the camera to frame only the area you want.  If plane has a simple default shader surface it should render pretty fast.

wiz

This sounds like your opportunity to learn scripting.

Unfortunately, it's really your only option for patch animation.

• I've tried what DA describes with a zoomed-in camera, and you never get it "pixel accurate". There's always a transition, or even worse, a change in aliasing.
• If you go with jestmart's idea of a plane primitive, you'll replace whatever would be reflecting in the eyes with a giant "catch light".
• Hiding everything but the object of interest removes objects that would block or reflect light, so you still end up with your patch not matching the surrounding image.

Oh, and don't forget to do all the rendering to a lossless format, otherwise you'll end up with a mismatched patch due to the video codecs.

 

jestmart

The plane primitive doesn't need to be that big as it would be right in front of the camera.  Create with about 11 divisions and use the geometry editor tool to hide sections to peep through.

Ivy

Unfortunately No you can't spot render a animation in daz studio .  you can how ever can use Opengl and do quick scene test renders of a few keyframes that usually just take a few minutes.

You can spot test a render on a single frame to see if the lighting and other things are the way you want them. But  you can do that with render preview window as well as you build your scene.

the only solution for spot test rendering in animation with daz studio would be if daz studio had real time animated raytrace preview. which at this time Daz Studio is does not maybe soon though with the new RTX cards out

Kitsumo

I know it's kind of late now, but the plane would have worked if it was converted to an iray matte surface. It would cover up any geometry behind it and leave transparency.

WendyLuvsCatz

Download Hitfilm express, free for a Facebook like

render the full image

zoom the camera in on the area you want to animate making sure only zoomed no aspect lens changes etc

render your animation images at a smaller size ( it only need be the same proportions height and width)

in Hitfilm import place the first image in video track one

import image series for the second track on top and use the modifier tab to scale and transform it to fit the first image, you can drag the bottom image to fit the length

you can see in the viewport how to match it up, is like using Photoshop or Gimp image layers only animated, you get similar blend filters right clicking too if you wish to do other things.

there are lots of Hitfilm tutorials to help

you then render it out in Hitfilm by exporting by clicking the little film icon by the timeline 

you can set it to mp4, avi in export to the size and frame rate you want and also under project settings 

WendyLuvsCatz

Or the movie editor of your choice

hansolocambo

This discussion went in all directions without always adressing the main request. 

So no, sadly there is no way to spot render an animation. Too bad as I need that right now and it definitely could be a very useful option to fix a small part of an animation without having to render the full frame.

 

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

The only way I can think of doing this would be to either - A hide everything else in the scene except for tthe parts [...]

A rendering engine calculates the rays of light bouncing on objects. If you hide parts of the scene what's rendered will look very different from the original. Not a solution at all.

 

Taoz said:

What's the purpose - to save time by rendering only part of the scene rather than it all?

If you render an animation and for example forgot to make to make your Genesis eyes blink. You can just spot render the eyes region an then mix all that with a video compositing app later. Without having to re-render everything just because you missed small eyes. 

 

jestmart said:

I wonder if instead of hiding stuff you placed a plane primitive with a hole in front of the camera to frame only the area you want.  If plane has a simple default shader surface it should render pretty fast.

Same answer as before. Any object that's part of the scene will make the light bounce thus changing the colors and generating new shadows. Not a solution.

@WendyluvsCatz way around is the only one that makes sense. But it's very artisanal and if you manage to get at the end pixels and resolution that correspond to the original for a seamless integration, it's gonna be a huge luck. 

 

Anyway. Hopefully they'll integrate that someday. I mean everything is coded. Render sequence. And render area. Mixing both to batch render a spot render shouldn't be the hardest thing to do. I was honestly surprised to see that it wasn't already there by default :(

WendyLuvsCatz

is actually not hard

I do it all the time 

it's called compositing 

often things render wrong especially my Carrara dynamic hairs, so I do a smaller render cropping the face and just a fringe to stick on top

the same applies to DAZ studio or anything
BTW Hitfilm can zoom in massively