What is needed for render animations ?

hey guys .
i wanna try to do a turnable of the house pieces i make (is it also called assets ? )
now i notice my computer himself is good for working and modelling . its heavy enough but despite that it got really old (had to change the computer parts 2 times already) so he is really slow when i try to do 2 things at same time. (rendering cost also lots of memory after all ) so i got the laptop of my dad . its kinda hard for me to model there since its also qwerty keyboard . now i wonder the proccesor is i5 and he has 8 ram (not sure where i can find the graphic setting (blender cant find this ? is that normal for a laptop ? )

the question now ; would it be a good idea to render the animations on the laptop ?
dont want to blow up the laptop either xD

  • odunov replied

    As far as I know, the easiest way to check your GPU model is to run DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Type "dxdiag" without the quotes in start menu, go to Display tab on the top and you can check it under the Device section. 

    If the laptop's GPU isn't that great, CPU rendering might actually be faster. If you don't want to blow up the laptop, you can limit the number of CPU threads blender uses for rendering under Properties > Render > Performance > Threads.

    I haven't used it yet, but if I were to do a quick turntable animation, I'd look into eevee.

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied


    @drgnclw then it's better to render turnables in eevee? Also I heard after anilation render I need to load them in video sequence? How I do that? 

  • odunov replied

    yyukinoh1989 Since Eevee is a real time renderer, rendering will be much faster. But you won't have the same visual quality of Cycles. As I said, I haven't used Eevee so you should do some research and try out both first :)

    You only need to use Video Sequence Editor (or other video editing software) if you render each frame of your animation as separate image files. You can render your animation in video format if you want. The major drawback of doing that though, if rendering fails for some reason, it kind of messes up the whole thing. 

    There's probably a course (or a course that mentions this) in the CGC library.

    This is where my very limited knowledge on the subject ends. Sorry I can't be of more help :(

  • smurfmier1985 replied

    yyukinoh1989 I'm using eevee on my laptop for almost anything because it's much faster. With Cycles the fan makes a lot of noise and crashes sometimes, with eevee no problems at all.

    Since you probably don't have complex materials at this stage (since you're still modeling), I recommend you use eevee, at least at this stage. 

    You know how eevee works you've practiced a lot with it ;)

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied


    ssmurfmier1985 thanx could you also help me a bit out on how I could make the turntable animation I do not really know the steps that's follow after I rendered animation. I just know he store all images in a map. I heard I needed to put them in a video sequence but I have no idea how or  where that has to be done xd

  • smurfmier1985 replied

    yyukinoh1989 I haven't tried it myself yet, but Aaron gave some links to videos explaining making turntables during the beginner modeling class:

    https://cgcookie.com/t/1413-bc1-1808-homework-aaron-rudderham?page=6

    3rd post from the top :)

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied


    ssmurfmier1985 that indeed worked and after a good 12 hours rendering i got seperated images of the animation. but i wonder how do you make a video with it like how you do with that ball exercise and other ones ?

  • smurfmier1985 replied

    yyukinoh1989 

    For the ball / animation exercises you do viewport rendering actually, and it's super fast. You have to render previews very often so it wouldn't be very efficient to do slow renders each time... You don't get any materials and lighting like you get with Cycles or Eevee though, you get just exactly what you see in your viewport in solid mode. Because it's so fast, I usually just render it straight out as a movie file for convenience. Helpful CG Cookie video:

    https://cgcookie.com/lesson/opengl-rendering 


    If you want to learn a bit more about the VSE, here are some CG Cookie videos that explain some of the functions:

    https://cgcookie.com/lesson/filming-yourself 

    https://cgcookie.com/course/finishing-rendering-a-blender-animation (everything in chapter 6)

    https://cgcookie.com/tutorial/how-to-loop-an-animation-clip-with-the-blender-vse 


    And this video might also be useful to you:

    https://cgcookie.com/lesson/exporting-a-turntable 

      

    That's all I know about this topic... hope this helps!

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied


    ssmurfmier1985 wow finally managed . i wonder is . avi a good choice and how do i import that here so that ist watchable in a looping way ?

  • smurfmier1985 replied

    yyukinoh1989 for video I usually use MP4, but avi will probably also work fine.

    This video explains how to loop a video a couple of times with the VSE:

    https://cgcookie.com/tutorial/how-to-loop-an-animation-clip-with-the-blender-vse

    You can upload that to YouTube and add it to your post, just like with pictures.

    If you want to make a .gif picture that loops into eternity like thecabbagedetective does, I really have no clue how to make that... sorry...

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied


    ssmurfmier1985 Thanx already for the help. i kinda wonder how thecabbagedetective did it . its awesome to have it looping forever xD i kinda start to understand what happens when rendering animations but it aint easy yet xD