I have a camera animated along a timeline. I have 3 lights linked to the camera helper as well as a couple of pieces of geometry.  During the above listed frames, it looks like the lights are moving and lighting the scene differently but as far as I can see, NOTHING is changing.

I have attached a pretty crappy (sorry) export of frames 1050-1150 as a video clip. I have also attached the max file stripped of all materials. I put a plain A&D mat on everything in the scene.

If someone has a few minutes to take a look at my scene and try to analyze what is going on I would really appreciate it.

Also, I am confused as to what settings I should be using for my Final Gather. (The settings under the “Reuse (FG and GI Disk Caching) area) If you have some advice on that, I would be grateful for that as well.

Thanks,

Dean

Max Design 2012 SP2 / Win 7 Pro
NVidia Quadro FX 4800 x 2 (non sli)
HP Z800 - 2 Xeon X5680 @ 3.33 GHz; 36 GB ram

	Attachment
corporate_overview_for_testing.zip

	Attachment
test_video.zip

Hi,

I’m affraid none of files was attached…

Am I right?

kcpr raffaEl

http://www.wizualizacje-3d.eu/en/portfolio

What FG setup are you using? I remember a thread where you asked about that. Because it’s a moving camera, you may have been advised to use “Project Points from Positions Along Camera Path”, which is fine when only the camera moves. However if you have lights that move (those attached to the moving camera) then this is completely the wrong FG setup.

BTW, there are no attachments.

Sorry about that. I didn’t preview...the attachments were taking so long, I thought I would post the text first and see if I could attach the files afterwards.

They are up now...still took a l o n g time to post them…

Dean

Max Design 2012 SP2 / Win 7 Pro
NVidia Quadro FX 4800 x 2 (non sli)
HP Z800 - 2 Xeon X5680 @ 3.33 GHz; 36 GB ram

“Project Points from Positions Along Camera Path”
“Single File Only (Best for Walkthrough and Stills)”
Normally these would be OK for an anim where the objects stay still and just the camera moves (a walkthrough), and save a lot of render time. But because your lights move, you do not have consistant lighting throughout the timeline, so a single FG map won’t work well.
I can often get away with not pre-calcing FG, and just do it for every frame as I render, though it can result in flicker in some cases, which may mean re-rendering.
To avoid filcker in animations, pre-calculate FG maps all frames (you may be able to save time by doing it just for every 2, 3 or 4 frames), then re-use the FG maps for the final render, with interpolation on. It’s the interpolation that reduces flicker. You can only interpolate with pre-calced FG maps.
The Help explains which FG modes to use in different situations.

Dean,

Are you sure you really need moving lights; this has always been a big challenge with MR. Try what Samab suggested above – the “One file per frame method” and “Interpolation over N frames” 2 to 4, with some luck you can get something acceptable.
Anyway if you are able to give up (make the lights static) the “Single file Only” method of cashing FG data is a pretty reliable one and could make the job easier.

ivan

Dean,

Looking at this, it might be easier to leave the camera, lights and background objects stationary and link and move just the time line.  But a better way would be to shoot a single static shot of the background objects and then run the animation on just the timeline moving and composite them together.  This would shorten your render times down as there is no need for you to continuously re-render the picture fram and pyramid and the moving timeline really has no interplay with the light.  Just a thought, though.  Another thing is when doing an animation like this, use FG on the pyramid and frame in the still shot and then use a fill light and completely skip the FG on the animated sequence of the timeline to save a ton of time in rendering.  I guess there are a lot of ways to make this faster and easier and it is more about how it works with your own project flow.

Stephen