studioGPU

Photo realistic rendering in MachStudio Pro?

There has been some discussion in the forums about the ability of MachStudio Pro to do photo-realistic rendering.

I guess some of that confusion has come about because many of the examples shown in our video tutorials and showcase are from real CG animation production projects where the look and feel was intended to be stylized (PlayMobil), mech (Bionicles) or illustrated (Princess Twins), rather than photo-real renderings.

I've read several comments in which, although artists were amazed by the performance and quality of MachStudio Pro, they were specifically searching for a solution to replace their offline photo-realistic rendering engines. A typical comment was something like: "Well V-Ray/Mental Ray/Brazil renders this architectural/automotive/product image like this. How close can MachStudio Pro get to this kind of photo-realistic render?"

Well it was a reasonable question, so Yoni (our chief scientist) got hold of some of the architectural models people were referencing as examples and ran them through MachStudio specifically with the intent of showing photo-realism and emulating the style of V-Ray.

Putting it to the test

The best way to evaluate how it turned out is to take a look at a few of the renderings. (note: unlike many renderings you see, these were not doctored in PhotoShop. They are the actual final renders.)

Click on the links for the two images and one video below. (will open in a new window)

Modern Exterior - rendered at 1200 X 1469 at x36 samples anti-aliasing in 84 sec.
This was accompanied by an 8 sec., 200 frame MP4 video at 850 X 480 rendered in about 2 hrs.

Airport Terminal - rendered at 1000 X 1200 at x36 samples anti-aliasing in 51 sec.

Side-by-side

Do a quick side-by-side comparison below. While you can see differences between the two images, which is V-Ray-rendered and which is MachStudio Pro-rendered is not as obvious as you might think. Beyond academic comparisons, in a production environment you need to evaluate if the difference in the images, justify the orders of magnitude differences in render times and differences in creative control by the individual artist.

Examples of photo-realistic imaging.

Photo-realism you can adjust on the fly

Now what makes these images especially interesting is that I (or anyone with MachStudio Pro) can change the materials, lighting, DOF, cameras, HDR exposures in a few minutes or even seconds, simply by moving some sliders. Try new variations, add additional lights, create new camera angles, change color grading - all with immediate feedback. If the level of reflections does not meet your requirements, change them - and not by waiting hours to see a new render. Creative control and production is completely non-linear.

What kind of 3D workflow do you use for CG animation?

I ‘ve been working on a story about 3D work flows and I would love to get some feedback on what kind of work flows other 3D artists have set up and are using for the 3D CG animation work.

Obviously there will be as many ways to set up a production pipeline as there are 3D artists, but from what I can tell, it boils down to only 2-3 unique variations.

The most common work flow is to model and then hand off to one or more lighters to render “in camera” within an applications like Maya or XSI, using a 3rd party rendering solution like VRay or Mental Ray. The pluses are that it feels like one environment.  The drawbacks are that the work flow is linear so you can get way downstream, doing a lot of test renders before you see problems or come up with a good creative. Also the rendering settings can be very complex to setup and if you use multiple lighters, you can get multiple results. Getting a great result can be time consuming, especially for animation. (See 3D Workflow Seminar from Assembly 2008.)

The second type of work flow relies much more on compositing in After Effects, Flame or similar software.  The animation scene is rendered in layers and compositors work with the rendered images in the same manner as the 3D, working with separate passes for things like specularity, diffuse, fill, reflection, etc. (See Professional Production Pipeline.)

Of course, MachStudio Pro offers yet a third way to work letting you work non-linearly “In Camera” to do both previs as well as final rendering. One artist can handle all aspects of production in a scene. Output can be a full composite or in layers for subsequent compositing.

I would like to get any feedback on other 3D work flows that CG artists are using and why? Where are you pain points?  At what points do you need to hand off your work to other people and when can you retain creative control yourself?  How does your work flow impact your ability to work with other creatives like the technical director?  Where would you want to see acceleration to speed up the inevitable multiple iterations? Do you use render farms or do you try to do it all in house? Really I am looking for anything that helps me better understand common 3D work flow pluses and minuses.

Real-time lighting at Halloween

If you drop by the StudioGPU office in Hollywood this week, you will have encountered a great example of what 3D animators and engineers do in their spare time.  Not sure who actually carved this, but kudos!

StudioGPU Chief Scientist talks about light & materials as brushstrokes on the canvas of the camera

At Siggraph 2009,  John Peddie Research held their annual rendering panel discussion and StudioGPU’s Chief Scientist, Yoni Koenig talked about parallelism in the visualization workflow and his ambition for MachStudio Pro.  In the video capture below, he describes the need to make the creative process for 3D production more spontaneous, giving the computer graphics artists the same freedom of expression that artists in the real world have with their hands in the clay or their fingers wrapped around a pencil.

To quote from the video: “So the whole idea is that light and materials become brushstrokes on the canvas of the camera, as opposed to linear methods which is more like a series of punch cards, which you create and then pass to your piano to play.”