Whats the most Cost Effective Animation Renderer????

Sekta

Hey, thanks guys for the responses. You know I didn't realise you could do rendered animation in KT, I should have mentioned in my first post I use KT echo for some simple occasional renders, I will definitely check out the step by steps Fredrick. Thanks.

Stan

dtrarch

Hi Sekta

SU to Kt is a very good option for path animation of the camera.
No object animation (maybe with Sketchy Physics) but fast and easy.
For object, moving people etc expect about one hour per second to produce.
You can import the KT files to an inexpensive Video editor and get some pretty good results.
I checked out Windows (XP) editor, Adobe Premier Elements, Virtual Dub (free) and a couple of others but selected Magix Movie Edit Pro 14 as it was super fast and easy to use (under $50 to buy) and very full featured.
(trial version is available)
The attached test render resolution has been reduced to fit here but
the higher rez version had smooth transitions and was very sharp.

Hope this is of some help

dtrMovie 2009-02-19.wmv

Ecuadorian

Real-world experience is what you asked for, real-world experience is what you get:

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?p=135023#p135023

For this particular test, Kerkythea was 9x faster than Podium. Podium took 55 minutes, and Kerky took 6 minutes.

How easy was it to setup in each renderer?

First, I created the four cameras in SketchUp.

Podium:
To be able to do the Podium test, I had to use an unofficial plug-in, called "SaphuA Plug-ins", and configure it before start. Then I had to run an additional external program called "PodiumAnimate" by the same author of the "SaphuA Plug-ins". To make things worse, the Podium output is not immediately usable in any video editor, as it is not a numbered sequence. You have to use a massive file renamer for that. And Podium's lack of internal exposure correction means for interior animations using only the sun, you'll have to do the corrections in post-processing, producing ugly posterization. And it crashed after rendering 175 frames, which means you'll have to sleep next to your PC with an eye open if you want to go this route.

Kerkythea:
Add "TG_" to any glass material before export, press the Kerkythea button in SketchUp (export took some three seconds), and in Kerky create a new Walkthrough animation using the SU cameras and hit render. Everything will be ready for the video editor after finishing.

How difficult was it to learn to render an animation in Kerky? I first opened KT on Wednesday 11th's morning, and by lunch I was already rendering my first animation. A few days after that I was already using it in commercial work.

For converting to JPG sequences to video I recommend VideoMach (about $50) and for more fancy editing Windows Movie Maker. VideoMach has some useful effects that Movie Maker lacks, as Motion Blur and white balance correction. Remember to buy the DivX pro codec (about $20) to use with VideoMach. If you need any more advice regarding Walk-through animations feel free to ask, as I've been doing it for years. (Well, my videos are not top-quality, but at least not that fugly)

dtrarch

Hi Ecuadorian

Yes KT wins.
Also I have ATL Studio and not up to speed at all.
I did check out VideoMach (shareware for $25 US)
MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 14 is a bunch more full featured and has all the exports/codecs to boot.
Up to 14 tracks as well (vid or sound)

Thx for your input too.

dtr

Sekta

Hi Ecuadorian,

Thanks for the advice, very much appreciated Luckily I have been using KT for a while now so the next step to rendered aninmations should not be a huge one

Stan

solo

I'm going out on a limb here, firstly I have never used KT to an extent that Iv'e rendered anything worth posting. I have recently dabbled with NXT (the trial version) I do not know the price of this app but will say it works as expected, the animation render is faultless and fast. I was very impressed at how easy it was, on my first attempt it worked just as I hoped it would.
and a feature I just love is the ability to render lines.

Here is a .gif (so image quality sucks due to conversion), took 6 minutes to make using a quad core using almost the lowest settings possible.

Ecuadorian

The beauty of the 3D rendering world is that it's full of options. No company has yet built a monopoly over it (Well, Autodesk kinda tries to do that...).

I used Art*lantis 4.5 for Walkthrough animations for years when I worked for Furoiani Building Co. (Actually, it was the local distributor of ArchiCAD and Artlantis who found me that job), and I have to say that it was the fastest renderer I've ever used. I haven't used the new version, but Coen Nanick highly recommends it, so it's worth considering. Artlantis Studio 2 (the version that does animations) + a collection of objects and shaders currently goes for $4,795. The naked version (without libraries) goes for $1,385. Yes, I remember Artlantis, ArchiCAD and the extras were big business for the local distributor... ala Gillette.

Yet another option, if you want extremely quick, no-hassle, animations from SketchUp, is LightUp, which goes for around $150.

kwistenbiebel

@ecuadorian said:

Artlantis Studio 2 (the version that does animations) + a collection of objects and shaders currently goes for $4,795.

Bargain!
Wuahaahaaaa.

For a render engine that is sub standard on photorealism that is a lot of Dinero.

Frederik

@solo said:

...firstly I have never used KT to an extent that Iv'e rendered anything worth posting.

I have to admit that I'm slightly puzzled why a person with your talent haven't been able to get along with KT...
Many users have adapted KT very quickly... Are you sure you've given it a fair trial...?!?

Al Hart

@solo said:

Here is a .gif (so image quality sucks due to conversion), took 6 minutes to make using a quad core using almost the lowest settings possible.

Nice GIF. I have never seen this technique before (We work out of our bath tub and never see the real world)

What is the trick for turning an animation into a GIF?

How crazy can you get (size, length, etc.)?

solo

AL

I use Corel animation studio to convert the .avi to .gif and I can optimise it so that it will be small enough to embed, it's an instant conversion, no waiting for a rerender.

I can size it to pretty much any size, aspect ratio, I can also recentre and overlap videos too.

Ecuadorian

Sekta, in a similar thread I mentioned 3dsMAX as an option if you want to have animated cars, people, etc. This is an animation I made in MAX a year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bLour3iMuc
Youtube degraded it a lot in the conversion .

But of course preparing a presentation with moving objects is exhausting and time-consuming, so most of my MAX walk-throughs were almost completely static. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6w5PxjKEpQ
Youtube Video

BTW, I faked the caustics (light reflecting from water) you see in the first MAX video using projector lights. Kerky has projector lights, too, so it shouldn't be hard to emulate this effect.

I feel a bit bad for having bashed Art-lantis in a previous post, so to set the record straight here are a couple of videos I made years ago with version 4.5:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR3zw-G3PvM
Youtube Video

Of course my videos are not photorealistic at all... But if I keep trying hard, I hope to some day be at least 10% as good as Neoshed or Master Kwistenbiebel.

I'll soon start posting some Kerky walk-throughs... As soon as I find a nice model to render, or a client asks for one. Until then, here's my first attemp, rendered just hours after opening Kerky for the first time. SketchUp model by Pibuz, modified by Master Solo:
Youtube Video

kwistenbiebel

That first 3DS Max animation is really nice.
Moving cars and people really make it alive!

That is what we really miss in SU and its render engines.

Could you share with us which animated people collection you used?
Are they full 3D or animated billboard textures?

Ecuadorian

Thank you, Master Kwisten. The people, cars and palms are RPCs from Arch-vision. The moving people are not 3D meshes, they're actually a matrix of pre-rendered images so depending on relative position a different image is loaded from the animation loop. That's why they project no shadows . The moving cars are 3D, though. The buses are from Turbosquid, but I edited the colors and reduced the poly count with MAX's multi-res modifier. Most of the smaller plants are from my own collection of photos, and they're actually made of three planes placed at 120º intervals.

As you can see, I used a radiosity mesh with very low detail... I think I used a 2mx2m or 1mx1m mesh. That's the reason you don't see any nice light/shadow details. I had to use this setting because for a finer mesh I would have needed some 200GB of memory... That's why I am so excited about Kerkythea: Its photon-mapping method is a lot more memory efficient. Yes, I know MAX's Mental Ray also does Photon Mapping, but at the time I was too lazy and I would have needed to set up all my materials again. That's the beauty of Kerky: It's like having several render programs in one, without having to re-create your materials.

The water turbulence was made with an mpg video texture, as were the TVs. I would be more than happy if a render engine for SU implemented video textures.

Blah11

I heard that hypermove is pretty good also I heard rumors that its extremely easy though I never tried it though im tempted heres some examples http://www.bunkspeed.com/hypermove/examples/index.html
hopefully this helps sadly I dont know how much it costs.

Actually a little searching around I don't think its on the market yet.

Ecuadorian

A video test of "The most Cost Effective Animation Renderer", Kerkythea:
[flash=854,504:kny3l3o3]http://www.youtube.com/v/h3cwW2xkloA&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D22[/flash:kny3l3o3]
Youtube Video

I say Kerky is "The most Cost Effective Animation Renderer" because:

It will cost you $0
It features an optimized* render method (Photon Mapping), meaning you can render in less time, and time is money...
It can work in the background, meaning that you can keep working in SketchUp while it renders (thanks for the tip, Fletch).
You can select which frames from the sequence to render, which means you can easily assign portions of the sequence to several machines, which again means time and money saved. And you don't need to spend a dime on additional licenses for those machines.
If you ever decide to try your hand with "unbiased" render methods, Kerky has them too, meaning you won't need to invest time learning to use another program from scratch... and again, time is money.
You won´t need to buy additional material libraries. The friendly Kerkythea community has shared lots of them.

= They say "biased"... I say "optimized".
The "stack of rubik's cubes" model comes from this thread:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=17167

pilou

Seems you have forgotten Blender
0 $ 0 £ 0 €
The more powerful at this date!
I don't say the more easy after using SU