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".
ssmurfmier1985 I guess I can maybe leave it at 1:30. Who knew 30 seconds could be such a long time. Props to that Albert fellow.
williamatics I don't know but if it can be used in Blender I would get it. Maybe there is an addon in the blender market. Let me go check.
EDIT: There is. I will be buying that.
dostovel I [finally] got around to testing your scene. You've set it up great! Only thing I had to do was edit the output file path to be relative. Your instructions are great btw!
As one last test, can you open each of your .blends and check that the output file path starts with: //Render Output/...
If that renders as expected to the proper directory, that means your .blends are ready for anyone to open and start rendering! I will update the original thread with instructions.
PS: I just realized that 2.7x requires CUDA installed for GPU and my linux OS isn't supported (debian 9 stretch). So I can't render these scenes with GPU and CPU is taking over an hour per frame. HOWEVER I can enable CUDA jut fine on 2.8 without having the cuda toolkit installed (?! Not sure how that's possible). So if you want to update your scenes to render in 2.8, I could render faster with GPU. Not required or anything, just an option.
dostovel I just noticed you're not using denoising. Any reason in particular? I think that could speed up render time significantly.
Definitely willing to help on this, though one (probably dumb) question: how do we who know's rendering what? We don't want overlap of course. Unless we just mention it here obviously.
@theluthier I believe he doesn't like how mushy the renders turn out when using denoising...
thecabbagedetective I believe they've tackled that with placeholder stuff, so you can never render the same frame as someone else is rendering.
Thanks for taking the time and checking everything out.
@theluthier Yes, the reason is that I get the feeling there is a crispiness that the render looses when I turn Denoising On. I was noticing muddiness in the renders and after a couple of testing I found Denoising to be the culprit. I guess it's just in the nature of how it works. But that was in render images, maybe in animation is not noticeable since there's motion blur anyways. I was getting that with the setting left in default, I even turned them down a bit so it didn't get so mushy, still I got that mushy vibe.
You think I should turn it on? then do a couple of test the figure out a happy medium with lower samples?
Also could you explain the "Relative Path" thing, I have never understood that. There was an old Jonathan Williamson tutorial about that I saw years ago, but it's not available anymore. I wish I had downloaded that.
I haven't used Blender 2.8 but I guess this is a good time as any. I will get on it ASAP in getting the file ready so you can use the GPU. It's worth it, that speeds up the renders significantly. I do have to go through the 2.8 learning curve though.
Since it's only 15GB of space available, it's going to have to be one file at a time. Once the frames of the first file are all done, I will copy paste the resulting EXR into my local disk and delete them from Google Drive so it frees up the GB space and then it'll be file #2 turn. Once the two files from that scene are all rendered up, the it'll be the second scene with another two more files turn, and so on and so on.
One question, people need 15GB of their own Google Drive to do this? I thought the only 15GB that it was going to take up was the one that I created for this.
Another question: should I turn Motion Blur on in the render tab? I normally do it on the compositor but I have gotten weird artifacts from time to time and I don't know if its worth the risk? I know turning it on on the render tab will have to be payed with render time though.
As soon as you answer and the last things are taken care of, I will leave my laptop and the 4 iMac at the office where I work rendering away. 😱
EDIT: Oh another thing, Once the "Car Modeling scenes is all done, I will delete it from Google Drive and get the next scenes uploaded. Does that mean I will have to generate the link for that scenes and it will be a different Google Drive link to have permissions for that new folder?
thecabbagedetective Miranda is correct that the "Placeholders" setting in the output panel means we can all render together and Blender will automatically render only frames that have no place holder (i.e. haven't begun rendering). Without that we would all have to organize and communicate to avoid duplicate renders.
dostovel If samples are too low, denoising can definitely muddle the final image quality. I'm doing a test now at 500 samples + denoising and I will compare. No denoise takes 1hr 25min on my machine. That's long even for my old computer ha. It'd be ideal if we can get it down to 30 min or else we'll be rendering for a long time or need a bunch of volunteers.
@theluthier Alright. In my laptop a frame takes 25 minutes with a GTX 1070, I would love to have the scene in 2.8 ready as soon as posible so you can render with your GPU. Render time for you should be like 10 minutes per frame with your monster machine and video card.
When it's all done, better to delete the 12 frames that are already in there that were for testing and start from scratch, right?
dostovel whoops, forgot to answer your questions.
One question, people need 15GB of their own Google Drive to do this? I thought the only 15GB that it was going to take up was the one that I created for this.
Everyone will need to have enough space in their G Drive to fit your folder. If they've filled the entire 15 GB allotment, they won't be able to sync your folder. With that in mind, we'll need to be mindful of the folder so it doesn't grow too big.
Yikes..after doing the math, this means the first scene's exr directory will total about 12 GB by itself. So yeah, we'll only be able to do one scene at a time, you transfer those frames to your local machine, delete the frames from G Drive, and then do the same for the next scene.
Should I turn Motion Blur on in the render tab? I normally do it on the compositor but I have gotten weird artifacts from time to time and I don't know if its worth the risk? I know turning it on on the render tab will have to be payed with render time though.
Honestly I've never rendered a cycles scene with true motion blur. Just for fear of renders taking forever I guess. Also it means we can't tweak the MB in compositing if we wanted. So no I recommend doing it in compositing with the vector pass. There are usually some artifacts but no one has ever pointed them out in my projects - not terribly noticeable.
Does that mean I will have to generate the link for that scenes and it will be a different Google Drive link to have permissions for that new folder?
No you won't have to generate a new G Drive link as long as you leave put all new scenes INSIDE the "Blender Packed Files" directory just like you did with these first scenes. Anything inside that folder will sync to anyone sharing the folder.
@theluthier So for example, if frames from 1 to 167 have been rendered and are all ok, I should copy paste the EXR to my computer, delete them from drive and go into the .blend and set the time line to start in frame 168 so Blender wont render the rendered frames again?
Ok, so motion blur better left to compositing.
And then there's the relative path thing, how did you set that up? because when I set the path, I just navigated to my google drive folder in my computer but the file path was long and had all the names from my computer folders. How do you set it up so that the path doesn't break with the /// thingies (I saw in the .blend in Drive it starts with 3 /// of this)
dostovel You could do that. But that might mess up people who have the file open and rendering when you save the new version. I'd try and wait till one entire sequence is finished, then transfer and delete from G Drive.
Check out the output panel options in the Blender docs. They mention using relative paths with a brief explanation.
And here's the results of a denoised render test:
There's barely different and definitely not muddled in my opinion; cleaner and arguably sharper. Denoised was rendered in 1/3rd the time. I think we should go with that. At least test 24 frames or so and see how it plays in animation. In fact I'll bet you can't even tell the denoised from the non-denoised in the sequence. So I'll leave the frames that are already done.
⚠ I'm going to update the .blends with the denoise settings ⚠
dostovel [Knock on wood] I simply opened scene 1 in 2.8 and it's rendering fine. About 6 minutes on my GPU (!). So I guess it can be rendered in either 2.79 or 2.8 but definitely only saved in 2.79.
@theluthier 6 minutes 😱 Did you wrote your machine specs somewhere? When I assemble my rig I want a Linux Luke.
That is awesome it opened in 2.8, I'm dreading having to learn 2.8 ultra fast in order to pull this of. I hope it continues to render fine 🤞🏼
There is a very small difference between the renders, but it's too minimum. In the front, the hood? where the engine goes, it looses a bit of detail. Also on the floor, beneath the car, it looses a bit of bump as well, it looks softer. But it's way too minimum, it's definitely worth the render time cut.
Ok so it's better to wait for a full scene to be over to move the files and delete. Should I delete scene 2 so there's no mistake that Scene1 is the first to go? When that one is done then upload scene 2?
dostovel Hi Omar, no one is going to notice these super small differences in an animation, it will go too fast and the movement in the animation draws way more attention . They will look for the small details in your still renders when they Study your portfolio after seeing your demo reel, and those are still the denoise free awesomeness they've always been 😊👍🏻
dostovel I hope I set this up properly and am ready to help you render when I'm sleeping!
EDIT: There might be some potential for me to break everything because that seems to be the thing I do with new technology on the first try, so here's hoping it's not going to be like that, heheh.
silentheart00 It's alright, as long as you don't "SAVE" in the file, you shouldn't break anything. It's just rendering away.