As soon as I have a beta 3 I'll get started on our next topic: Light Buffer Objects
The basic gist of these wonderful little things is that we can take a group of lights and collect them into a single buffer allowing us to, for instance, take all the lights that belong to a sky dome and group them so that we don't have to deal with dozens of image buffers in the EXR file.
We're going to be looking at a modified version of the Toys project from the CD, and will go over some pretty neat techniques (I think anyway.) Keep watching this space.
-David
Full Version: Be one with the Buffer
Hash, Inc. Forums > Technical Direction and Development (Learning Animation:Master) > A:M Rendering, Compositing and Special Effects > Compositing and Post Effects
Looking forward to it.
I got tired of slaving away for Bob's Floating Spheres and decided to punch up my demo reel with hopes of landing a Compositing job at Flixar (Pixar's evil twin.) So I pulled the Toy's project off the CD, if this doesn't show who can composite nothing will! (The project is attached to this post, download it, copy the Toys project off your CD (/HASH2005/Data/Projects/Toys) and put the project file in the same directory as Toys.prj)
I added a few lights to the shot to simulate Radiosity: a cieling bulb a bulb for each wall and a bulb for the floor. all these lights have specular components, but only the ceiling bulb casts shadows. This is in addition to the lights already in the shot.
I have left the lights pretty raw in their intensity and colors, knowing that I will be compositing them later anyway. The resulting render (at one pass multi-pass) looks like this:
I'm pretty sure I can work with this, so I load up the EXR into a new project and look at the buffers:
Crimeny that's a lot of buffers... and if the simple spheres i was doing for bob wound up with those big long complicated composites, this here will be
... I don't even want to think about it. This is the thing that will get you with composites: The amount of raw data you get to play with is at once amazingly powerful and pretty darn complicated.
So can we do anything to make this a more manageable set of Buffers? You bet your sweet bippy there is. The secret to dealing with any complicated task is to compartmentalize it to the point where you have manageable chunks. For light buffers this means we need to start thinking about what lights can be grouped together with what other lights and adjusted all at once (here we come to the age old trade off: Fine Control vs. Ease of Use the more we simplify the buffers the more fine tune ability we will be giving up.)
The first step is to create some groups for our lights. by default we already have one, you don't see it in the PWS or anywhere else simply because all the lights are in it (making it pretty pointless
) These groups are called Light Buffer Objects, which may sound familliar, if you will recall from back in the starting simple thread, one of our rendering options was Light Buffer Objects.
A Light Buffer object is part of a choreography, so logically we create one by bringing up the contextual menu for the Chor.
And we choose Insert Light Buffer.
Upon doing this you will now see in the PWS a light buffer object folder and under it two sub folders called Light Buffer 1 and Light Buffer 2. Light Buffer 1 contains the last light listed in the chor and Light Buffer 2 contains all the other lights in the scene. If we were to render this out now we could choose the Light Buffers Objects buffer type (rather than the each light in it's own buffer type) and we would have two sets of buffers rather than the 9 we started with. that's a pretty drastic reduction in buffers. probably a bit too drastic really but it's a start. So we already have one light in the Buffer 1 and it happens to be the light I added to simulate light bounce from the ceiling. Now we need to decide if there is going to be any lights that we would want to group with this particular light... we could for instance just drop all the radiosity bulbs that I added into a single light buffer and increase the room bounce as a unit... but I don't particularly like that option. I want to be able to adjust bounce in a logical way that reflects the motivated light in the scene. I think the only light I would want to add in to this buffer would be the one for the wall that is not in direct light from the key (the one over on screen left.) simply because it will be the one light to share the relative intensity of the ceiling's bounce. SO I figure out which light it is (now actually would be a great time to go through the chor and rename all those shortcuts from names that tell us nothing: Shortcut to Light 6 (3), to names that mean something: RearWallBounceLight) and I drag the shortcut in Light Buffer 2 up to light Buffer 1, this will move that light into the same group with the ceiling bounce light. I then rename that buffer object so that I know what it is later:
So now we look at what we have left... Two Floor Bounce Lights, One wall Bounce, one Key, and three fill lights.
we can use the same logical deduction we used for the other two bounce lights to determine if we want to group any of these lights together. I'm eyeing those bounce lights... that would be a good thing to adjust as a unit I think. the key really should be on it's own so we want to give that it's own buffer.... the fill lights... Hmm well I might be tempted to put them all together but the blue colored klieg I named Cool Fill has shadows that it casts... the other two fill lights do not... so lets divide the lights along those lines with two fills in one buffer and the Cool Fill in a second:
This will leave us with 5 light buffers to composite with, which is almost half of what we had originally, not a bad savings. So to review: we added light buffer objects for each logical grouping of lights in our scene, we then assigned those lights to their respective buffers. Everything was renamed to make it more legible. Now it's time to render.
We set this render up like we did for the Starting Simple project. with the exception that we chose the Light Buffers Objects type instead of the Each Light in it's own buffer type:
Ok I'm going to put this on to render and get back to work on my cover letter for Flixar, once they see my work I just know my Hollywood dreams will come true!
-David
I added a few lights to the shot to simulate Radiosity: a cieling bulb a bulb for each wall and a bulb for the floor. all these lights have specular components, but only the ceiling bulb casts shadows. This is in addition to the lights already in the shot.
I have left the lights pretty raw in their intensity and colors, knowing that I will be compositing them later anyway. The resulting render (at one pass multi-pass) looks like this:
I'm pretty sure I can work with this, so I load up the EXR into a new project and look at the buffers:
Crimeny that's a lot of buffers... and if the simple spheres i was doing for bob wound up with those big long complicated composites, this here will be
... I don't even want to think about it. This is the thing that will get you with composites: The amount of raw data you get to play with is at once amazingly powerful and pretty darn complicated. So can we do anything to make this a more manageable set of Buffers? You bet your sweet bippy there is. The secret to dealing with any complicated task is to compartmentalize it to the point where you have manageable chunks. For light buffers this means we need to start thinking about what lights can be grouped together with what other lights and adjusted all at once (here we come to the age old trade off: Fine Control vs. Ease of Use the more we simplify the buffers the more fine tune ability we will be giving up.)
The first step is to create some groups for our lights. by default we already have one, you don't see it in the PWS or anywhere else simply because all the lights are in it (making it pretty pointless
) These groups are called Light Buffer Objects, which may sound familliar, if you will recall from back in the starting simple thread, one of our rendering options was Light Buffer Objects. A Light Buffer object is part of a choreography, so logically we create one by bringing up the contextual menu for the Chor.
And we choose Insert Light Buffer.
Upon doing this you will now see in the PWS a light buffer object folder and under it two sub folders called Light Buffer 1 and Light Buffer 2. Light Buffer 1 contains the last light listed in the chor and Light Buffer 2 contains all the other lights in the scene. If we were to render this out now we could choose the Light Buffers Objects buffer type (rather than the each light in it's own buffer type) and we would have two sets of buffers rather than the 9 we started with. that's a pretty drastic reduction in buffers. probably a bit too drastic really
but it's a start. So we already have one light in the Buffer 1 and it happens to be the light I added to simulate light bounce from the ceiling. Now we need to decide if there is going to be any lights that we would want to group with this particular light... we could for instance just drop all the radiosity bulbs that I added into a single light buffer and increase the room bounce as a unit... but I don't particularly like that option. I want to be able to adjust bounce in a logical way that reflects the motivated light in the scene. I think the only light I would want to add in to this buffer would be the one for the wall that is not in direct light from the key (the one over on screen left.) simply because it will be the one light to share the relative intensity of the ceiling's bounce. SO I figure out which light it is (now actually would be a great time to go through the chor and rename all those shortcuts from names that tell us nothing: Shortcut to Light 6 (3), to names that mean something: RearWallBounceLight) and I drag the shortcut in Light Buffer 2 up to light Buffer 1, this will move that light into the same group with the ceiling bounce light. I then rename that buffer object so that I know what it is later: So now we look at what we have left... Two Floor Bounce Lights, One wall Bounce, one Key, and three fill lights.
we can use the same logical deduction we used for the other two bounce lights to determine if we want to group any of these lights together. I'm eyeing those bounce lights... that would be a good thing to adjust as a unit I think. the key really should be on it's own so we want to give that it's own buffer.... the fill lights... Hmm well I might be tempted to put them all together but the blue colored klieg I named Cool Fill has shadows that it casts... the other two fill lights do not... so lets divide the lights along those lines with two fills in one buffer and the Cool Fill in a second:
This will leave us with 5 light buffers to composite with, which is almost half of what we had originally, not a bad savings. So to review: we added light buffer objects for each logical grouping of lights in our scene, we then assigned those lights to their respective buffers. Everything was renamed to make it more legible. Now it's time to render.
We set this render up like we did for the Starting Simple project. with the exception that we chose the Light Buffers Objects type instead of the Each Light in it's own buffer type:
Ok I'm going to put this on to render and get back to work on my cover letter for Flixar, once they see my work I just know my Hollywood dreams will come true!
-David
Very good tutorial. This is helping me a lot exploring secret of composition. Thanks a lot.
| QUOTE |
| I added a few lights to the shot to simulate Radiosity: a cieling bulb a bulb for each wall and a bulb for the floor. all these lights have specular components, but only the ceiling bulb casts shadows. This is in addition to the lights already in the shot. |
David, just to show you how serious I consider your tutorials, I've decided to created my own .pdf(s) to print out ...
A bit different fm Chap. 13 F/X (Doing It In Post) fm A:M 2002 : A Complete Guide
Well I'm glad you like em. If CRM and I ever come to an agreement for an update I'll be adapting these tuts for that, if we don't... well i'll probably get them adapted anyway, it'll just take longer 
-David
-David
| QUOTE |
| ...well i'll probably get them adapted anyway, it'll just take longer |
Sometimes longer is better ... your book, for me is a wealth of info ... same as these tutorials
Boy I better get this done... bob just had me working overnights for three straight days on his dumb old spheres! I tell you I get no respect, I know that at Flixar I'd be treated better!
When last we left we had set the Toys project to render with some nice neat buffers... ahhh buffers. So we start a new project and load in our .EXR sequence and take a gander at our render.
and then our buffers:
Not bad, certainly less than we had before, but that is still a lot of data to work with... If we are going to be at all effective at using this information we need to know which buffer is for which buffer object in the original PWS.... Hmm
Luckily it's very simple: if we look at the organized buffer objects from the original chor:
we have five buffers and despite the separation of specular, shadow and diffuse elements five light buffers in our EXR sequence, and thankfully they are in the same order. So we can simply say that all Light 1 buffers are related to Indirect Bounce Light Radiosity Fakers, and all Light 5 buffers are related to Cool Fill. See? simple as pie!
Armed with this knowledge we fearlessly charge in and right click the EXR in the PWS and choose Build Composite.
now we have this:
Look Familiar? it should, it's pretty much the exact same base comp we had with bob's spheres, there just happen to be a few more nodes for this composite, but in the long run... that really has no effect on our work here, other than it requires that we be especially diligent in our organization efforts. To that end we should go through and rename all the elements in this Composite now.
Not a bad base from which to start our compositing. Now I just need to decide what tweaks I want to do to the render. I need to get a nap so i can think clearly and to get the burned in image of bob's floating spheres out of my eyes, I'll dream up some neat tweaks for this image and will be back later.
-David
When last we left we had set the Toys project to render with some nice neat buffers... ahhh buffers. So we start a new project and load in our .EXR sequence and take a gander at our render.
and then our buffers:
Not bad, certainly less than we had before, but that is still a lot of data to work with... If we are going to be at all effective at using this information we need to know which buffer is for which buffer object in the original PWS.... Hmm
Luckily it's very simple: if we look at the organized buffer objects from the original chor:
we have five buffers and despite the separation of specular, shadow and diffuse elements five light buffers in our EXR sequence, and thankfully they are in the same order. So we can simply say that all Light 1 buffers are related to Indirect Bounce Light Radiosity Fakers, and all Light 5 buffers are related to Cool Fill. See? simple as pie!
Armed with this knowledge we fearlessly charge in and right click the EXR in the PWS and choose Build Composite.
now we have this:
Look Familiar? it should, it's pretty much the exact same base comp we had with bob's spheres, there just happen to be a few more nodes for this composite, but in the long run... that really has no effect on our work here, other than it requires that we be especially diligent in our organization efforts. To that end we should go through and rename all the elements in this Composite now.
Not a bad base from which to start our compositing. Now I just need to decide what tweaks I want to do to the render. I need to get a nap so i can think clearly and to get the burned in image of bob's floating spheres out of my eyes, I'll dream up some neat tweaks for this image and will be back later.
-David
Why can't the Names of your lights from the choreography automatically show up when you open the .EXR file? It seems like a lot of extra work to have to go in and rename everything twice, I would find that annoying.
Noel? Is this something that could be changed?
Noel? Is this something that could be changed?
Dunno if there is a why or not, but this is a feature request I have put into good ole A:M reports
For now this is the way we need to do things. It doesn't take that long to do the naming, thankfully, but every little bit counts
-David
---- Edit -----
As of V12.0a, the buffers now should be automaticly named the same as the light buffer objects or the lights depending on which you choose to control the buffers.
-Noel
----- End Edit ----
For now this is the way we need to do things. It doesn't take that long to do the naming, thankfully, but every little bit counts
-David
---- Edit -----
As of V12.0a, the buffers now should be automaticly named the same as the light buffer objects or the lights depending on which you choose to control the buffers.
-Noel
----- End Edit ----
David,
Thanks again! Wow! Yesterday I finished your start simple tutorial and I was just so excited about it and looking so very forward to your next tutorial. I had this sinking feeling it was going to be a while and then low and be hold I look down and there it was the next tutorial.
Were is that tip jar? I am ready to load it up for ya.
Thanks again.
I do have a question on the save animation as features. Is there any documentation on the compression settings and what they do?
What setting do you recommend to use?
Thanks again! Wow! Yesterday I finished your start simple tutorial and I was just so excited about it and looking so very forward to your next tutorial. I had this sinking feeling it was going to be a while and then low and be hold I look down and there it was the next tutorial.
Were is that tip jar? I am ready to load it up for ya.
Thanks again.
I do have a question on the save animation as features. Is there any documentation on the compression settings and what they do?
What setting do you recommend to use?
It depends on what you want really.
for output to an editor or for use within some other post application an uncompressed tga or EXR sequence is probably best. I know you are looking for a way to get things losslessly into cineon format, you can do this if you can find a program that can export cineon and import EXR then it's a simple matter of setting up a batch export.
Once the v12 sdk becomes available it should be possible to use the new plug-in image format capacities to program an i/o plug-in for A:M that does direct cineon output.
Glad you find the tuts useful so far, after I get caught up on the things that fell behind after my business trip last week i'll get back to the tuts
-David
for output to an editor or for use within some other post application an uncompressed tga or EXR sequence is probably best. I know you are looking for a way to get things losslessly into cineon format, you can do this if you can find a program that can export cineon and import EXR then it's a simple matter of setting up a batch export.
Once the v12 sdk becomes available it should be possible to use the new plug-in image format capacities to program an i/o plug-in for A:M that does direct cineon output.
Glad you find the tuts useful so far, after I get caught up on the things that fell behind after my business trip last week i'll get back to the tuts
-David
I haven't forgotten about my Flixar dreams here... but you might be gladdened to hear that what has occupied me and kept me from rolling out the next post in this tut is that I have finally inked a contract to update the 2002 guide. So i've spent the last few days just pouring over the old text and making copious notes. I'll be working on my compositing tutorials here in this forum (all feedback welcome of course ) But I need to get my notes compiled for the changes I want to make (and of course make my deadlines ) so it'll be a week or two before I focus on just this thread... hold on to your seats and we'll be back into it faster than you can say "Jack Robbins"
-David
) But I need to get my notes compiled for the changes I want to make (and of course make my deadlines ) so it'll be a week or two before I focus on just this thread... hold on to your seats and we'll be back into it faster than you can say "Jack Robbins"-David
| QUOTE (Obnomauk @ Jul 20 2005, 07:26 PM) |
| I haven't forgotten about my Flixar dreams here... but you might be gladdened to hear that what has occupied me and kept me from rolling out the next post in this tut is that I have finally inked a contract to update the 2002 guide. |
Congratulations! I'd love to buy a copy of the updated book.
Please also try to go into detail about SimCloth, and don't forget that toon rendering went through some changes in v10 (the Gradient Only shading method, and regular Toon shading only using one light.)
David,
Thanks for the info on my question. I am glad to hear you are getting ready to do a update to the guide. I am looking forward to getting it.
Thanks for the info on my question. I am glad to hear you are getting ready to do a update to the guide. I am looking forward to getting it.
Great news David! Perhaps you might consider also running a pdf version alongside the book version. It is 2006-7 (when released) after all.
How/when and in what formats the book is released is entirely up to the publisher.
-David
-David
David
I am starting into this tutorial and I am seeing in the project i down loaded the lights are not named but in the tutorial they are. Are we suppose to name the lights to match the tut?
Also when I do the insert light buffer in the light buffer 1 I only have one light light number 6 but in the tut there are two lights and they are named.
I am using v12.0e could you see if every thing is doing what it is suppose to be doing so I can find out if I am doing things wrong or if maybe things have changed since the beta versions. Thanks
I am starting into this tutorial and I am seeing in the project i down loaded the lights are not named but in the tutorial they are. Are we suppose to name the lights to match the tut?
Also when I do the insert light buffer in the light buffer 1 I only have one light light number 6 but in the tut there are two lights and they are named.
I am using v12.0e could you see if every thing is doing what it is suppose to be doing so I can find out if I am doing things wrong or if maybe things have changed since the beta versions. Thanks
Hey Jack.
It's actually part of the tut... a good part of grouping lights and setting up light buffers is all about is going through a chor and deciding which lights are doing what and giving them logical names. So with that in mind I left the lights as and exercise, for you to name. If you want to take a stab at it (from my list of names) and then post your list I would be happy to say if you got it or not.
-David
It's actually part of the tut... a good part of grouping lights and setting up light buffers is all about is going through a chor and deciding which lights are doing what and giving them logical names. So with that in mind I left the lights as and exercise, for you to name. If you want to take a stab at it (from my list of names) and then post your list I would be happy to say if you got it or not
. -David
David
Ok got it. Thanks for fast response to my question.
Ok got it. Thanks for fast response to my question.
I just wanted to bump this tutorial back up to the front were it belongs. So go back to the begining of thread if you want to do this tutorial. It would be great if this pinned at the top for new comers.
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