What is best solution for having same Motion Blur and Displacement from different renderers

[Alok Gandhi]

Hi All,

Very soon we will be starting on a project which is sfx intensive. Soft will be used for all 3D stuff. The SFX department will be working on different shots in Maya and Houdini depending on the nature of the shot and artist strength. The challenge we will be faced with is having same motion blur and displacement in the final renders to used in comps, since Mantra, Arnold, Mental Ray and Renderman all have different algorithms producing different pixel images.

Any ideas on what is the best way to get around this ?

Cheers !!

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[jo benayoun]

Hey Alok,
How was your holdidays in India ??
-> 2d motion blur done at a comp level ? less work for you guys :D There are pretty nice plugins available for Nuke.
-> baking everything that comes out Maya, Houdini or Softimage, and rendering in the software of your choice ?
-> or to be extreme, what about implementing your own motion blur algo ? get some pleasure ! I know your love for maths !! :D

?????!!!!@###??

jo

2012/1/26 Alok Gandhi <alok.ga...@gmail.com>

[Alok Gandhi]

Hey Joe B,

I had a wonderful time, thanks.

2D motion blur is always an option, but not accurate as you know. For this show, quality is of utmost importance and usually also we never go 2D blurs. Baking is not possible because I am talking of particles and fluids here, as you know there is not very reliable workflow options for particles from Houdini to Soft, and fluids cannot be imported at all. So that also doesn't work for us. As far as implementing custom motion blur is concerned, I am not sure if Mantra, Renderman or Mental Ray are exposed enough to implement one's own algs and override the factory one, but this I am not sure of.

Cheers !!

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[Grahame Fuller]

For mental ray, it's definitely possible. In Softimage you can define user motion vectors per point and mr renders them properly.

http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2013/en_us/userguide/index.html?url=files/GUID-1E30919E-2C57-442B-8FE8-E522B0E2342-1328.htm,topicNumber=d28e370736

gray

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alok Gandhi
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 03:13 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: What is best solution for having same Motion Blur and Displacement from different renderers

Hey Joe B,

I had a wonderful time, thanks.

2D motion blur is always an option, but not accurate as you know. For this show, quality is of utmost importance and usually also we never go 2D blurs. Baking is not possible because I am talking of particles and fluids here, as you know there is not very reliable workflow options for particles from Houdini to Soft, and fluids cannot be imported at all. So that also doesn't work for us. As far as implementing custom motion blur is concerned, I am not sure if Mantra, Renderman or Mental Ray are exposed enough to implement one's own algs and override the factory one, but this I am not sure of.

Cheers !!

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 2:50 PM, jo benayoun <joben...@gmail.com<mailto:joben...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hey Alok,
How was your holdidays in India ??
-> 2d motion blur done at a comp level ? less work for you guys :D There are pretty nice plugins available for Nuke.
-> baking everything that comes out Maya, Houdini or Softimage, and rendering in the software of your choice ?
-> or to be extreme, what about implementing your own motion blur algo ? get some pleasure ! I know your love for maths !! :D

?????!!!!@###??

jo

2012/1/26 Alok Gandhi <alok.ga...@gmail.com<mailto:alok.ga...@gmail.com>>
Hi All,

Very soon we will be starting on a project which is sfx intensive. Soft will be used for all 3D stuff. The SFX department will be working on different shots in Maya and Houdini depending on the nature of the shot and artist strength. The challenge we will be faced with is having same motion blur and displacement in the final renders to used in comps, since Mantra, Arnold, Mental Ray and Renderman all have different algorithms producing different pixel images.

Any ideas on what is the best way to get around this ?

Cheers !!

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[jo benayoun]

all your points makes sense ! it should be an interesting challenge ! :)
actually, I dont know enough to say if we can implement something right in it to get motion blur but Im quite sure its possible with Softimage and almost sure concerning Maya ! :)
I found this, which could be a starting point (contacting the guy who already has to deal with that kind of things) ...
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=113452&sid=fe2dcf56eb23f3d9f3f8292e9083e051

good luck 'lok !
:)

[Alok Gandhi]

Thanks both Grahame and Joe for good starters !!

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[Andy Moorer]

Alok you might also send a shout out to mental images, their metaSL efforts to create multiple  renderer compatible shader compiles may have produced some solutions. Long shot, but you never know.

Another option worth considering is the katana-type approach, you could have all assets collected to be rendered with a unified rendering solution. The different units can preserve their own workflows for the most part, if you have to, but final renders and periodic tests would all be via the same renderer. There again the metaSL might come into play, ensuring that the same shaders are being used across all renderers during 'internal' testing.

Ideally, to my way of thinking, assets are delivered to a single point for rendering even if they are immediately sent back out as plates to their point of origin afterwards. Im not a pipeline guru, but having a bunch of different pipes come together before render rather than after strikes me as a good idea for more reasons than just MB.

[Alok Gandhi]

Thanks Andy, we have been thinking of Katana for some time now, but for this projects it is not on the cards. But definitely it is a better way to go. I will check up with mental images as well.

cheers !!

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