Ray trace animation no lights on in house :(

[brancusi]

I'm doing a fly through using the animation tool and have run into a problem with lighting. If I create a lo-res animation with raytracing off, everything is fine - the interior lights come on as the fly through goes inside. When I do the hi-res version with raytracing on, I find the interior is totally dark (save any light from windows) as the lights are turned off

I can't turn off daylight (which fixes this for still image renders) because then the outside fly through obviously looks as if it is night.

It was rather frustrating as the render took 72 hours (on a powerful PC!) and although I've now changed to a smaller (640x480) render size, it still takes perhaps 6 hours to render 90 seconds of video. This would be OK if it did it right ... but what's the key to getting the lights on inside?

Any clues!

Roger

[Draft Patrick]

Hi there,

I think that this problem may be related with the crash issues you reported back in July
http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,1229.msg5997.html#msg5997

can you describe your computer, processor, RAM, video card, OS, etc?
Also, inform the malware or antivirus programs installed, if you use them

Pat

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Pat and Roger,

This is a known issue Pat, that the programmers are working on.  Essentially the problem is that the cameras work like real ones in that they adjust to the brightness and daylight is so much brighter than artificial light. When you need outside and inside in the same scene, which obviously Roger does for his movie, it really highlights the issue.  The Radioisty render is done once at the start, with the camera outside and does not adjust to the much duller lighting when it moves inside as the scene has already been rendered previously and the animation is now just taking a series of photos.

Roger,  

Basically what you have to get the inside brightness up very high or the outside sunlight very low.

You could try the following (or combination of them):

1. Use the Overcast setting - it may be enough to achieve your aim but you will not have the same sun and shadows effect of course.

2. Boost interior lighting dramatically (1,600W is about the max per fitting - 1000W at 160%  - from memory it won't go further) - and ....

3. Use the SAME bulb in every fitting. If you use different wattages in lights it can have the effect of turning some off and erratic effects result.  If some are too bright, because they are near a wall for example, dull them down by using a coloured or deep grey glass on the bulb itself. Create your own bulbs for this with different grey levels and replace these bulbs in your existing fittings.  Remember you can use multiple bulbs in one fitting too if necessary and space them around some distance from the fitting to spread the light further.

4. Turn the sun off and use ordinary lights to simulate the sun. You can illuminate the whole scene with lights suspended above the model.  Just make sure they are not in view of the camera and/or they are made microscopic in size and fittings set to Transparent and zero Emmissive factor.  These would need to be bright of course, so, if necessary, dull the ones inside as mentioned in 3 above.

5. Do separate movies for outside and inside parts and join them turning the sun off for the inside part.

Jack's video tutorials may have other suggestions too.http://www.imsidesign.com/Products/TurboFLOORPLAN/TurboFLOORPLANArchitecturalTraining/tabid/546/Default.aspx

Yes rendering times can be long. It is not the radiosity render that is the problem as that is only done once for the whole scene (maybe half an hour or so) but then each single shot that it takes to make the movie, may take a minute or two. Not long in itself but there are so many to do the whole movie!  In this application I designed and built for the Synergy website (www.synergy.net.au/renovator), the house rotations took almost 6 hours to render but to make the movie it produced 180 images at about 90+ seconds each (4.5+ hours!).  You may be able to reduce the time considerably by reducing the frame rate but will sacrifice some smoothness of course.  The rotation that went into this web application was reduced to 45 frames, so if it had been rendered at that it would only have taken a bit over an hour. The reduction in this case was to keep the file size down for web use of course. This whole web application was done in TurboFloorPlan, except the text and icons of course, and was a very challenging at times (especially aligning the movie camera with the still ones for the individual view animations). Thankfully the inside views were with the roof off, so I did not have to worry too much about getting inside and outside lighting balanced.

I hope some of this helps with your project,

Allan

[Draft Patrick]

Hi Allan,

OK! I just assumed that the 72 hours rendering were related with the previous issues

Pat

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Pat,

There could be PC issues too maybe but unfortunately it is quite feasible, if the movie is done in high resolution, high frame rate and a long route, that it could easily take days!

Allan

[brancusi]

Thanks!

Yes I'd sort of come to the conclusion that doing 2 render passes - 1 for daylight and 1 for interior and then editing between them might be best - although I like the exterior lighting idea too - my only problem there being I really want to do animations for particular times of the year so this may end up being too complex.

Boosting the interior lights is what I will try first - hadn't thought of that - nice thinking!

As for the PC and earlier probs, the PC runs Windows XP SP 3 and has a E7300  processor running at 2.66Ghz, there is 4GB of RAM and several terrabytes of disk space. Graphics card is NVIDIA Geoforce 9600 GT.

I do find that the program crashes regularly, probably once an hour when I'm modelling with nothing else active. Generally it happens when stretching or joining walls - there is clearly a software bug as the processor shoots to 50% (TFP doesn't take advantage of the dual core except when rendering it seems) and sticks there - it is stuck in an infinite loop somewhere as much as I can tell. I've learnt to live with that and just make sure I save before I join any walls!

As for render time, I found that 1024 x 768 was just too slow - 640x480 is disproportionally faster and will serve my purpose as I can upscale when I do the final transcodes. I don't mind the speed that much as I appreciate what it is doing and could always throw more hardware at it if it was a real issue.

Thanks again for the advice, I'll report back if and how I get a good result

Roger

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Roger,

The following comment worries me a little:

I do find that the program crashes regularly, probably once an hour when I'm modelling with nothing else active. Generally it happens when stretching or joining walls - there is clearly a software bug as the processor shoots to 50% (TFP doesn't take advantage of the dual core except when rendering it seems) and sticks there - it is stuck in an infinite loop somewhere as much as I can tell. I've learnt to live with that and just make sure I save before I join any walls!

I use TFP daily and sometimes all day and half the night and I cannot recall the last time it crashed (maybe years ago!), so I am concered that you may have a corruption in the project (which can also lengthen render times too!), probably in the walls ,since that is what seems to trigger it. Have you done a Repair lately? (File / Repair Project) Save before you do as it may delete various items whcih can have a 'cascade effect' if you have auto floors on etc.

If nothing dissappears and problem persists I would still zoom in close on wall joins and make sure there are no stray segments of wall.  In the image below the intersection on the left looks OK (except for a break the in cavity - for a non-cavity wall you would not see that) but notice, when you click on it, all the tiny segments that have been left after multiple edits of the intersection. These can be disasterous to stability and render times.

You should not be experiencing constant crashes so something is wrong in the model (or there is some issue with the PC but I will leave the latter to Pat if the model appears OK)  If you can't find an issue in the model you could post it here so we can have a look or email it to me if you prefer.

Allan

[Draft Patrick]

Hi Allan and Roger,

Ahh yep ! 
This is the reason why I asked--> when crashes happen (as was reported in the past) something is compromised (file and / or computer)

Some notes
# 1 -->  Of course, my first question is: Roger --> did you try to draw some walls in an empty file and join them? Does the system crash? If yes, the problem is (probably) in the computer. If not, the problem is in the file, as Allan is suggesting
#2 --> Now, an observation regarding the floorplan mode--> I know that the floorplan is not a "rendered element" , however it is still a graphic element.... so, it may crash with some graphic factors. One of the most common factors is the "zero issue" --> if you have a situation as the one showed in Allan's image and, when you try to join the walls, two points may have opposite information / location / etc and in this case, the point information is... zero --> therefore the system crashes

I'd suggest that you check the walls as Allan suggests and / or that you perform the simple test of my note # 1--> in this way we'll know if the crash problem is with the file or with the computer

Pat

[Doug.S]

There are several benefits to doing multiple render passes in pieces and then assembling them in a video editor...

- Each render takes less time (tho total time would be the same); can do in pieces when PC has free time rather than clogging a PC up for many hours (except for overnight runs)

- If you make a render mistake, less time is lost.

- Odd camera position/angle changes can be avoided.

- In doing a video editor "paste together" you have more control and can add sounds easily.

Downside is don't change any significant parameters that make a design change that is not reflected in each video clip.

Overall, editing with clips takes a bit longer but the results are better and view flow changes can be arranged at your desire....without doing a complete re-render....and in time chunks more suitable to your schedule.