jumping rigs on the render farm

[adrian wyer]

as the subject says, we have a few scenes that , when rendered through RoyalRender, have the occasional frame where it looks like the rig has been evaluated differently

 

a body part will appear to jump on one frame....

 

pretty random!

 

the rigs range from standard 3D chains to deform splines on curves (for eels etc)

 

anyone come across anything similar

 

currently our last minute fix is shape baking the animated characters prior to rendering.... not ideal!!!

 

a

 

Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY
++44(0) 207 580 0829

adria...@fluid-pictures.com

www.fluid-pictures.com

 

Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71

 

[Mirko Jankovic]

Is it possible that renderfarm is using some of the workstations that someone is also working on?

What happened to me is that with Gear rig, if computer is rendering in the background and CnsComp is turned on on at the same time, rendered frame would have similar jumping rig, like chest would be rotated differently.

Not sure if that is the case but worth of try.

[Stefan Kubicek]

I've been having this too a lot since Soft 2011, and now in 2012, and I'm not using any render management software.
To me it appears entirely random, happens on different frames every time,
but once it happens while rendering a sequence of frames it happens on more than just one frame, or not at all.

I was also under the impression that it got better when I removed a redundant level of hierarchy from the rig.
Also, I seem to get this more frequently when more than one machine renders into the same directory using the "Skip existing Frames" option,
but that could be a coincidence. It's been driving me pretty nuts. My initial thought was that it might be related to other installed 3rd party renderers,
but atm I only have Vray installed, and I believe I had the same issue once just before I installed it, so that would rule that one out too.

> as the subject says, we have a few scenes that , when rendered through
> RoyalRender, have the occasional frame where it looks like the rig has been
> evaluated differently
>
>
> a body part will appear to jump on one frame....
>
>
> pretty random!
>
>
> the rigs range from standard 3D chains to deform splines on curves (for eels
> etc)
>
>
> anyone come across anything similar
>
>
> currently our last minute fix is shape baking the animated characters prior
> to rendering.... not ideal!!!
>
>
> a
>
>
> Adrian Wyer
> Fluid Pictures
> 75-77 Margaret St.
> London
> W1W 8SY
> ++44(0) 207 580 0829
>
>
> adria...@fluid-pictures.com

> <blocked::blocked::mailto:adria...@fluid-pictures.com>
>
> www.fluid-pictures.com <blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pictures.com/>

>
>
> Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
> Company number:5657815
> VAT number: 872 6893 71
>
>
>

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Stefan Kubicek Co-founder
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1050 Vienna Austria
Phone: +43/699/12614231
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-- This email and its attachments are
--confidential and for the recipient only--

[adrian wyer]

so an instance of Softimage (GUI) can affect a batch that's running in the back ground?!?!?!  really?!

 

cripes

 

a

 

Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY
++44(0) 207 580 0829

adria...@fluid-pictures.com

www.fluid-pictures.com

 

Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71

---

No virus found in this message.
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[jm khayat]

From my experience, it's been years since we didn't acually render a scene with rigs inside, except for tests or very small projects.

Our scenes only include geometry and external mdd files.
Never any problems with renderfarms or rig related stuff.

my 2 cents

jm

--



jm.k...@wanadoo.fr

Office: +33 9 50 04 76 15
Mobile: +33 6 99 79 56 98

6 bis avenue des Iles
74000 Annecy - FRANCE

2011/11/24 adrian wyer <adria...@fluid-pictures.com>

[Juhani Karlsson]

Yeah. I had some of these problems too.
I made pointcache as well, solves the issue atleast.

- juhani

2011/11/24 jm khayat <jm.k...@wanadoo.fr>

[adrian wyer]

just to get this straight;

 

Does ANYONE on the list actually render characters with 'live' rigs? or is the general consensus that the rig evaluation across

a farm is SO ropey, that you HAVE to bake/pointcache you animation prior to rendering?

 

inquiring minds wanna know!

 

a

 

Adrian Wyer
Fluid Pictures
75-77 Margaret St.
London
W1W 8SY
++44(0) 207 580 0829

adria...@fluid-pictures.com

www.fluid-pictures.com

 

Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
Company number:5657815
VAT number: 872 6893 71

[Sandy Sutherland]

Nope - all point cached here!!

S.

_____________________________
Sandy Sutherland
Technical Supervisor
sandy.su...@triggerfish.co.za
_____________________________

---

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of adrian wyer [adria...@fluid-pictures.com]
Sent: 24 November 2011 16:19
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: jumping rigs on the render farm

[Alan Fregtman]

Hi Adrian,

Rig evaluation should be no problem in the farm. (Beware of rigs dependent on addons/plugins and the farm slave accidentally failing to load the workgroups though.)

When I was working in commercials it was pretty common to shoot renders with the full rigs, but the scope wasn't as grand as film work... usually just one or three characters to be comped against a live action plate later.

In the film world, however, there's so many referenced assets in a shot that there's considerable overhead in loading a rig and evaluating it. It's best to just bring in geo with the right shaders and point it to a cache of some sort. It's not that they couldn't evaluate properly; they totally could, but it's faster not to, not to mention that lighters appreciate the speed in navigating a viewport that is snappy and responsive due to lack of rig evaluation.

Just my $0.02.

Cheers,

   -- Alan

[Schoenberger]

A user logged in with CnsComp would not be an issue as the farm uses
its own prefs.

Skip existing is something you can try, just enable "Sequence Divide".

Holger Schoenberger
technical director
The day has 24 hours, if that does not suffice, I will take the night

[Schoenberger]

> Does ANYONE on the list actually render characters with 'live' rigs? or is
> the general consensus that the rig evaluation across

Here at the Filmacademy mostly all students use rigs and do not cache at all.
The only caches I know of is if they mix Maya with Softimage for
animation/rendering.

Holger Schoenberger
technical director
The day has 24 hours, if that does not suffice, I will take the night

Quoting adrian wyer <adria...@fluid-pictures.com>:

> just to get this straight;
>
>
>
> Does ANYONE on the list actually render characters with 'live' rigs? or is
> the general consensus that the rig evaluation across
>
> a farm is SO ropey, that you HAVE to bake/pointcache you animation prior to
> rendering?
>
>
>
> inquiring minds wanna know!
>
>
>
> a
>
>
>
> Adrian Wyer
> Fluid Pictures
> 75-77 Margaret St.
> London
> W1W 8SY
> ++44(0) 207 580 0829
>
>
> adria...@fluid-pictures.com

> <blocked::blocked::mailto:adria...@fluid-pictures.com>
>
> www.fluid-pictures.com <blocked::blocked::http://www.fluid-pictures.com/>
>
>
>

> Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
> Company number:5657815
> VAT number: 872 6893 71
>
> _____
>

> From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com
> [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Juhani
> Karlsson
> Sent: 24 November 2011 14:08
> To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: jumping rigs on the render farm
>
>
>
> Yeah. I had some of these problems too.
> I made pointcache as well, solves the issue atleast.
>
> - juhani
>
> 2011/11/24 jm khayat <jm.k...@wanadoo.fr>
>
>> From my experience, it's been years since we didn't acually render a scene
> with rigs inside, except for tests or very small projects.
>
> Our scenes only include geometry and external mdd files.
> Never any problems with renderfarms or rig related stuff.
>
> my 2 cents
>
> jm
>
> --
>
>
>

> <mailto:benjamincl...@gmail.com> jm.k...@wanadoo.fr

>
> Office: +33 9 50 04 76 15
> Mobile: +33 6 99 79 56 98
>
> 6 bis avenue des Iles
> 74000 Annecy - FRANCE
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 2011/11/24 adrian wyer <adria...@fluid-pictures.com>
>
> so an instance of Softimage (GUI) can affect a batch that's running in the
> back ground?!?!?! really?!
>
>
>
> cripes
>
>
>
> a
>
>
>
> Adrian Wyer
> Fluid Pictures
> 75-77 Margaret St.
> London
> W1W 8SY

> ++44(0) 207 580 0829 <tel:%2B%2B44%280%29%20207%20580%200829>

>
>
> adria...@fluid-pictures.com
>
> www.fluid-pictures.com
>
>
>
> Fluid Pictures Limited is registered in England and Wales.
> Company number:5657815
> VAT number: 872 6893 71
>
> _____
>

> From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com
> [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Mirko Jankovic
> Sent: 24 November 2011 13:30
> To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: jumping rigs on the render farm
>
>
>
> Is it possible that renderfarm is using some of the workstations that
> someone is also working on?
>
> What happened to me is that with Gear rig, if computer is rendering in the
> background and CnsComp is turned on on at the same time, rendered frame
> would have similar jumping rig, like chest would be rotated differently.
>
> Not sure if that is the case but worth of try.
>
> _____
>

[Mirko Jankovic]

"A user logged in with CnsComp would not be an issue as the farm uses its own prefs."

It is probably not the same setup or something but whenever I had rendering on my workstation in the background and I used comp at the same time with CnsComp on Gear rig in rendering had moved chest.

Tested couple times so it definitely affect rendering in the background on same comp.

[Ben Beckett]

We got around it by point caching over the last three months

Ben

[Schoenberger]

> "A user logged in with CnsComp would not be an issue as the farm uses its
> own prefs."

> Tested couple times so it definitely affect rendering in the background on
> same comp.

Depends on your farm setup/manager.
With RR the farm has its own prefs.

[peter boeykens]

because you ask it like that - depends.

 

you can leave a rig inside a character and have everything rendered correctly on the farm, but sooner or later you'll run into problems like this.

When you do, you lose a lot of time at the moment you can't afford to lose any: you're rendering so hopefully animation is done, and you want to finish and deliver.

 

If you want to avoid this from happening, pointcaching is the proper solution - but it takes time and effort to include it in your pipe.

It also makes your workflow more rigid/linear - and slower for quick turnaround jobs

eg. each time you do an anim fix you need to export caches again

 

For quick'n'dirty jobs the shot is done before a problem occurs and some occasional troubleshooting comes with the territory.

For film work it would be masochistic not to pointcache.

Anywhere in between, say high end commercial or low end long format work - it’s a choice to make and pay the price one way or the other. (stability vs flexibility)

If you are in the situation, as many are, of having to adapt your workflow to each short turnaround job, which is always quite different than the previous one - there is no easy answer.

 

Just my two not very practical cents.

[Raffaele Fragapane]

On a loosely related, and late, note: That's point caching in a way, it actually IS ideal for many reasons ;)
Maybe time to look into it for your pipeline.

[Enrique Caballero]

are you sure its not an FK/IK update problem?  

That happens sometimes if a different computer on the farm picks up a chunk of say 15 or so frames , and the first frame it renders the IK/FK hasnt updated properly and the arms or legs will render in the wrong spot, then the next frame the update forces the IK chains to update properly and it fixed the problem.

its incredibly common.  before we pointcached characters. the way we delt with it here is by having a static keyframe on the end effector of the chain, that fixes 50% of the problem, we also force the farm to step forward and then back a frame on a scene open event to fix the other half

[Stefan Kubicek]

I can safely say that it has nothing todo with IK, the "rig" I have is a model, a null, and some boxes attached to it. Pretty simple.
Animation is on the null, and sometimes, when it rotates over time, it starts to build up some error that gets bigger while it rotates,
It looks as if some of the boxes (usually only one out of the 8) attached to the null suddenly rotate around a slightly differently located pivot,
itroducing a visible offset in the final render (but never the render region or preview window), then gets smaller again during the rotation,
so it's only visible between two key frames, but never reproducibly in the same range of time/key frames.

Atm I have zero faulty images left, I fixed them all manually by re-rendering. I will try to re-render and post a screenshot later....

> are you sure its not an FK/IK update problem?
>
> That happens sometimes if a different computer on the farm picks up a chunk
> of say 15 or so frames , and the first frame it renders the IK/FK hasnt
> updated properly and the arms or legs will render in the wrong spot, then
> the next frame the update forces the IK chains to update properly and it
> fixed the problem.
>
> its incredibly common. before we pointcached characters. the way we delt
> with it here is by having a static keyframe on the end effector of the
> chain, that fixes 50% of the problem, we also force the farm to step
> forward and then back a frame on a scene open event to fix the other half
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Raffaele Fragapane <
> raffsx...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> On a loosely related, and late, note: That's point caching in a way, it
>> actually IS ideal for many reasons ;)
>> Maybe time to look into it for your pipeline.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 12:18 AM, adrian wyer <
>> adria...@fluid-pictures.com> wrote:
>>

>>> ** ** ** ** **

>>> currently our last minute fix is shape baking the animated characters
>>> prior to rendering.... not ideal!!!
>>>

>>> ** **
>>>
>>> a****

[Raffaele Fragapane]

This kind of stuff can happen very easily when there are circular dependencies, and/or other elements that won't always evaluate reliably across frames.
Errors creeping in or jumps like that can happen easily when the graph isn't dirtied properly, or Soft is left to deal with a circular dependency, kind of copes with it, until something else gets animated and changed the graph evaluation from there.

It's hard to tell without actually seeing the scene or the rigs, but I haven't seen anything like what you mentioned that wasn't related to a wonky or corrupted graph in years.

[John Richard Sanchez]

You beat me to it. I was working on some animations for sesame street and found the same thing when rendering on royal render. It seems like cycles in my rigs were the cause of the problem for me. That was a huge learning experience for me. :) No more cycles at least thats what I aim for. 

--
John Richard Sanchez
www.johnrichardsanchez.com

[Michal Doniec]

Not me. Always separate envelope hierarchy from animation rig and plotted or baked meshes.

--
----------
Michal
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mdoniec