Update 7/29/2019: Omar's new scene is ready to render and already underway on SheepIt. If you're part of the CG Cookie Render Monsters team, we'd appreciate you launching the SheepIt app on your computer to contribute. NOTE: Make sure on your SheepIt account "Options" you enable Render my team's projects first. Thanks!
Update 7/18/2019: Omar is polishing new scenes.
Update 7/3/2019: Omar has 2 new files ready for rendering. Let's do dis.
Update 7/1/2019: We have finished rendering two of Omar's reel projects. Way to go community. Omar still has several to prep for rendering. I'm going to unpin this thread and re-pin once it's ready to render again.
Update 6/17/2019: Omar has updated his shared project folder with new scenes to render. It was accidentally uploaded as a new folder so if you've already synced the previous folder, you can delete that one (if it's still there) and you'll have to sync this new one. From now on we know how to avoid this so no more re-syncing.
The time to render is now!
Update 6/16/2019: We've finished Omar's first 2 scenes! Way to go People 👏👏 Thanks to everyone for contributing. Now we're waiting for Omar to setup and upload his next scene.
@theluthier Kent after comparing the original Cycles renders and Element 3D real time ones, I think you are right, rendering it out of Cycles is totally worth going the extra mile for. Although you and Lampel said it was great, that it's 95% there, for a second I saw a twinkle in your eyes saying "C'mon dude, you know it, I know it... there is no spoon." And then the twinkle continued "No one eats an Oreo and doesn't go all the way to the stuffing in the middle, the cookie part is just enough". I see what you mean twinkle.
I didn't want to bother people though, but I guess if I'm going to try this there's no way around that. I don't know how to use Drop Box, I've never used it before. Should I get an account? I hope it's enough space. I remember you kinda set things up in a similar way in the Rendering & Finishing A Blender Animation course. I should re-watch that. I have never done things through the internet so this should be a learning experience.
I, Kent Trammell, am commandeering Omar's original post! [evil laugh] I'm the one that encouraged Omar to reach out to the community for helping him render his demo reel. My computer just sits collecting dust most nights and I'm happy to lend some rendering power to this project while I'm asleep. I suspect that there are a number of CGC community members willing to do the same 🙏
If you want to help out, please follow the instructions below!
The status of the project will be stated and updated at the end of the thread title in brackets. When it says "READY TO RENDER" that means a project has been submitted to SheepIt for rendering. If it says anything else, the project isn't ready for rendering yet.
The status of the project will be stated and updated at the end of the thread title in brackets. When it says "READY TO RENDER" that means it's ready to sync the project folder and start rendering. If it says anything else, the project isn't ready for rendering yet.
STEP 1 -- Sync Omar's project folder to your Google Drive.
If you have a gmail account, you have 15 GB of free Google Drive space. Just click the link and when you're redirected to the Google Drive website, right click on the "Demo Reel Files" folder and choose Add to My Drive.
If you're on Mac or Windows, use the official Google Drive app (personal version) to sync your Google Drive to your computer's file system.
Render_Scenes_1_Packed.blend
If you're on Linux like me, there is no official app. I've had some success with Open Drive but it seems to have stopped syncing on my system. I'm currently using Insync and it's working beautifully. It's $30 after the 15 day trial period, which I will likely pay.
STEP 2 -- Open one of the render-ready .blends with Blender 2.8
After the project folder has finished syncing *entirely* to your computer, launch Blender 2.8 and open Demo Reel Files > Blend Packed Files > Render_2.8-Scene_1_Packed.blend. Then follow Omar's instructions in the file for CPU or GPU rendering, whichever your machine is best equipped.
Enable viewport rendering to double check the scenes look fine (no pink from missing textures). I've tested these files myself and they should be ready to render without problems.
STEP 3 -- Render the Animation
The files should all be setup properly so anyone that opens them doesn't have to do anything but click the Render button.
That should be all you need to do to contribute rendering to Omar's project! Note that these scenes are heavy and can take an hour or more per frame, even on a high end machine, which is why Omar needs our help.
When the rendering is all done (or you need to stop and regain your own GoogleDrive space), simply navigate to the Google Drive website, right click on the folder and choose "Remove".
Even Neo asked for help. Get it set up; you know you've got my rig. ;)
phoenix4690 Oh no, now Phil knows how to convince me of stuff. Thanks for the rig support.
I started to run into stuff. For example, I have a file where I link everything into and render in it, so it uses a lot less memory. Now I want to swap assets and I can't seem to do it. It's not an Edit Linked Library issue, I want the asset in the Render Scene to now reference the asset in another file so it retains the transforms and the composition.
@theluthier I thought that perhaps I could take advantage of the fact that since render times in Cycles are longer and I'd have to make shorter scenes, I could change the style of the video to a faster paced edit, like in the old David Fincher, Judith music video from A Perfect Circle.
dostovel This is awesome! You definitely have my rig while I sleep. The dropbox workflow is quite simple actually IF everyone involved has enough space available in their account. The basic (free) plan only offers 2 GB which is most definitely not going to be enough for all the image sequences you'll be rendering.
Alternatively, Google Drive comes with 15 GB free for anyone with a Google account. That should be doable for rendering your scenes with the community.
If we don't want to bother with cloud storage like those, we could do it manually. Meaning everyone that wants to contribute downloads a packed .blend of your scene and we all divide the frames evenly, then compress the files and pass them back to you via dropbox or google drive. This process would require more organization and management but wouldn't be hindered by cloud storage issues.
I suggest we start with a test scene to see if A) the cycles render is really really worth it and B) we can work out the technical kinks of "crowd-rendering" like we're discussing. I will happily volunteer for this initial test scene! Once we get that working it would just be a matter of others syncing to the dropbox or google drive directory OR downloading the packed scene and manually rendering frames.
I have to switch gears to critiques today for the stream but afterward (or tomorrow) I can help get the system set up. For now look into Google Drive and see if that's something you already have or want to sign up for.
EDIT: And I like the faster cut idea 👌
dostovel Oh man, I wish I could help you out but I don't want to blow up my laptop... I'll be emotional support then for now, cheering everyone on! 🙌🏻
Great to see you reaching out to the community btw, your work and sparkling personality is worth it 😊👍🏻
dostovel I'll help out with the rendering, too, dude. My PC's decent enough to give it a shot.
dostovel What's the status of this project? Have you decided to go with Dropbox / Google drive or a manual (non-sync) approach?
@theluthier I have two scenes ready to go. I will upload them to Google Drive since it has the most space available. If I have to open a paid account because it turns out 15GB is not enough, I will do so.
Here's a small breakdown of the scenes, let me know if you think there's a render that doesn't belong there, like the goblin or Vincent character, I didn't model those, I only worked on the lighting, so I'm only planning on giving them two or three seconds of screen time.
Questions:
- Motion blur "On" in general for the scene or it's better in compositing? I know in the compositor it is less accurate, but much faster to render... but should I go the extra mile for this one off project?
ssmurfmier1985 silentheart00 Thanks for the support.
Also here's a rough playblast.. the scenes are not in the final order they're supposed to go at. Also the music may not be the one that I'll go with. Also the number of cuts may not be all that go in the final render, they are a lot and I'm trying to keep the reel under 1 minute. From what I've heard people that look at demo reels don't spend too much time on them, they have so many to watch that they probably wont watch it to the end so it's better to keep it short probably.
How do I share the Dropbox link with you? Do I need your email to give permissions? There are two scenes in there for testing.
@theluthier Bad news for Google Drive, Gmail also uses its space, so I don't have the 15GB available. So paid account is the way to go. Prices are very affordable. Should I go with Dropbox? Will 100GB be enough with the Google Drive plan? Or better be safe than sorry and go with 2TB with Dropbox?
With that much space I will be able to render EXR and do compositing, but doesn't that mean people will have to upload GB of files with their internet then? As soon as a render finishes, the internet kicks in as it automatically starts to upload to the cloud?
dostovel Trying it for free is a convenient option... And yes, annoying that Gmail also counts toward your Drive usage. You could get another account and have one specifically for cloud rendering. Up to you.
dostovel You should totally sign up for a second gmail account, just to get a clean 15 GB of cloud storage. Here's the process I recommend to get me involved:
If we get that all accomplished, we should be in good shape for others to sync the directory and contribute to rendering!
@theluthier
Alright, I made a new Gmail account, I felt kinda dirty, as if I knew the place where my friend keeps the Pringles is always unlocked and I just went in there and took a bunch.
Here's the link to the Google Drive.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FH1ffaaSRqkQYxl10-65X0MnZbXhW67U?usp=sharing
For now it's just for this scene
The idea is to render this one all out, then when it's over, I can download all the files to my local hard drive, wipe all the files from Google Drive to reset the 15GB then start with another scene, that way the 15GB have less chance of running out.
There are two .blend, Render_Scenes_1 with 554 frames and Renders_Scenes_2 with 165 frames.
Use Blender 2.79 to open the files, not 2.80, since I think files between them are not interchangeable.
I have it sent to Open EXR Multilayer, with only a couple of render passes, just enough to do a bit of compositing for Motion Blur. Alternatively I could enable Motion Blur in the scene and turn off the render passes and save up in file size, but pay for it in render time.
It's set to 1,500 samples, and it still has noticeable noise. Seed clock is on. 1920x1080 res, no denoising, I hate how the images looses their crispiness and looks mushy, no matter how low the settings.
I'll let the laptop doing some renders throughout the night as a test.
Hey guys,
it would be great if you could make a post about what settings, which blender version, etc. I need to do to help out on this, as soon as you figured out how to do it. I have like no idea how this rendering process works and I don't want to goof it when I try to render something from that Demoreel.
Hey ttobles , after Kent makes some test and gives the green light, I will make a small post summarizing what to do. But it's fairly straight forward, use Blender 2.79, decide if you'll go with your CPU or GPU and hit the animation button. Rendered files will automatically fall into where they need to go.
Also it looks like if you're rendering away, you've render a couple of frames, and then you hit cancel because you need to shut your computer down or something, the file that is canceled stays as an EXR with the number of the frame but its size is if 0kb. The problem here is that I think Blender will see that as if the EXR frame is rendered, set and done but it's actually a canceled one 0KB one and it will jump that frame.
Apologies for dragging my feet a bit dostovel. This weekend I had issues syncing the folder you shared only to find out it was an issue with the 3rd party app I was using on linux. I solved it with another app and will be able to test tomorrow (currently out of the home office on a chromebook).
Considering that, it's surely best to use the official desktop app for Mac / Windows since it's free and official.
You're also correct about cancelling a render. That 0KB file is the 'placeholder'. When the frame is finished it replaces the placeholder with the final image but if you cancel it leaves the placeholder. To fix we just need to delete the 0KB placeholders, re-open the .blend file and hit render so blender automatically fills the missing frames in the sequence.
From what I can tell, the sync setup via google drive looks to be working. I just need to do a test render or two to confirm, then we can invite the whole world to help!
@theluthier Do you think I should keep it under a minute? As it is now it will probably go to 1 minute 30 seconds long. Is it too much? should I cut down time and therefor render time?
Every EXR is about 25MB if I keep a scene below 600 frames, 15GB of Google Drive should do. It'll be a matter of uploading Scene 1 to Google Drive, render it, copy paste rendered files to my local hard drive, delete from drive, upload scene 2, repeat again and again for what it'll be at least 10 scenes. 😰
Sometimes I don't understand Blender's file path. Sometimes the path breaks, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes you pack a texture into the .blend, sometimes it goes missing. Sometimes the library path holds up, sometimes you open the file and the path is broken. Sometimes you do it on a PC and it works, sometimes you make the path on a Mac and the path gets set up differently.
Blender needs an asset manager ASAP.
At the Houdini 17.5 launch event, they announces a new software they were working on called PilotPDG, which is basically an asset manager that can be used with any software. I'm not sure if it has been released yet, but if it has, it might help?
dostovel I don't know about Modeling reels for sure, but for Animation reels 1 min 30 secs is considered the ideal length. 1 minute or less is a student reel who haven't got much work yet, anything longer than 2 minutes suggests you can't choose your best works and recruiters loose their interest because it's taking too long...
Also for animation reels they advice to start with your best shot (to grab attention) and to end with your second best shot (to leave the receivers with a good impression, wanting to see more). Might work great in terms of best model & second best model as well.
Additionally, only include your best work. Your reel is only as strong as your weakest shot (weakest model), so make sure the stuff in between is professional quality as well.
Hope this helps..
