3D artists without access to render farms often run into memory issues when they need to render out huge still images meant for print. If your scene is heavy with geometry and textures / displacement, sometimes you can’t even render out an A3 size image at 300 ppi. It is not a matter of render time, but your render simply gets stuck halfway and never completes.
My colleague found an easy solution for me, which is to render in regions. This reduces the amount of memory needed to load the information in your scene at one go.
Our workflow is to set our maya renders in DOS mode outside of maya (creating a new text document and changing the extension to .bat – which is more straightforward to me than setting it through the command prompt) (if you wish to read up more on rendering Maya in DOS here’s a good tutorial by Paul DiPierro: http://www.pdipierro.com/tutorials/MayaDOSRenderTutorial.html)
To region in regions through DOS, the command would look something like this:
render -r yourRenderer -x imageWidth -y imageHeight -reg startWidth endWidth startHeight endHeight -im imageName filename.extension
Here’s an example of my batch file to render an A0 size 300 ppi image (I was afraid that my render will crash halfway through the night so I really separate it into many sections)
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 0 3500 0 3000 -im section1 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 3500 7000 0 3000 -im section2 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 7000 9933 0 3000 -im section3 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 0 3500 3000 6000 -im section4 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 3500 7000 3000 6000 -im section5 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 7000 9933 3000 6000 -im section6 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 0 3500 6000 9000 -im section7 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 7000 9933 12000 14043 -im section15 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 3500 7000 12000 14043 -im section14 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 0 3500 12000 14043 -im section13 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 7000 9933 9000 12000 -im section12 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 3500 7000 9000 12000 -im section11 filename.mb
render -r vray -x 9933 -y 14043 -reg 0 3500 9000 12000 -im section10 filename.mb
It looks kind of scary at first glance but it’s not hard to setup once you understand how it works~
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Filed under: Little Discoveries | Leave a Comment
To transfer your custom Maya hotkeys to another computer, copy userHotkeys.mel, userNamedCommands.mel, and userRunTimeCommands.mel (in the documents/maya/version number/prefs folder) from the source to the destination computer.
The autodesk services & support site suggests to only copy the first 2 … but somehow it only works for me when I copy all 3.
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Filed under: Random Thoughts | Leave a Comment
Here’s a simple but potentially very useful tip to start off this new category:)
I used to just make instances of the polygon geometry itself, but there was once that I found myself needing a lot more control for the instances. We know that instancing enables us to make modifications to a geometry, and the changes will be reflected in all the instanced copies. But when happens when halfway I discover that I need to add new or remove geometry from the existing instances rather than just editing the vertices?
Thus a good workflow for instancing will be
1) Create a locator
2) Create an empty group and parent it under the locator
3) Create instances of the locator
4) Parent the geometry that you want to instance under the empty group, and they will appear in all instances of the locator.
This makes your instances really versatile as you can freely add or remove multiple pieces of geometry from the group, so you don’t have to worry about making big changes.
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Little Discoveries
One thing that came up to me as a problem while working as a 3D Generalist is that I keep forgetting about some of the little tips or tricks that I researched about / discovered during work. My job often requires me to do some research online ranging from troubleshooting problems, to finding resources and methods to achieve certain look / effect. However, the projects that I work on tend to be quite diverse, and by the time I need to use some of those ‘discoveries’ again, I find myself forgetting about them and having to go through the research process again…
Thus, I’ve decided to add a new category to this blog to document some of those ‘little discoveries’.
Hopefully I will be able to keep this going and hope that it can be of some help to someone else too :)
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Showreel 2012
I realised it has been a year since I started work at my current company – Veer Motion Graphics – and I was thinking it’s probably a good time now to look back at some of the projects that I had worked on for the past year and compile a new showreel (partly also because I was feeling guilty of not updating this blog for the past year haha :x).
I am currently working as a 3D Artist, though every now and then I also worked on some motion graphics and compositing stuff. Here’s my lastest reel that focuses mainly on my 3D works :)
3D Generalist Reel 2012
Download the shot breakdown here
Filed under: Work | Leave a Comment
Chugawagas at the 3rd SSFA!
Tales of the Chugawagas has been nominated for Best Animation at the upcoming 3rd Singapore Short Film Awards!
There will be a week long of screening of Singaporean shorts at the Substation from 5th to 11th March, and the Chugawagas will be making their appearance on 9th March, 7 – 8 pm slot.
Check out the SSFA website for the full list of nominees and screening schedule!
All screenings are free to attend and no advanced booking is required so join us for the celebration of Singaporean short films!
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Filed under: Competitions & Festivals | Leave a Comment
CMYK full film
The full film of CMYK is up on vimeo!
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And I’ve just heard from my mentor that she has seen my film at the Melbourne International Animation Festival 2011!
I didn’t receive notice that my film was selected so it came as a pleasant surprise:)
I’m honoured that CMYK was screened in the program - Best of the Next: International Graduate Festival.
And here’s a witty description of my film on the festival’s website:D
Cyan, Magenta and Yellow can really brighten up a place. Makes you wonder why they call black ‘Key’, because it’s just NOT!
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Tales of the Chugawagas Website
The website for my graduating film ‘Tales of the Chugawagas‘ is up!
This film is a production with my 2 teammates – Goh Huiying and Anne Tan. talesofthechugawagas.wordpress.com will feature some of the pre-production and production art behind the film:)
Below is our film poster~
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And not forgetting, ADM Grad Show 2011 is opening in 3 days time!
It will be held at Old School, 11B Mount Sophia from 14th to 23rd May, 10.30am – 9.00pm daily.
Join us on the opening night on the 13th; Festivities start from 6.30pm.
For more information, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/admshow2011
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Next up: Monstra!
CMYK will be travelling to Lisbon, Portugal next:)
MONSTRA | Lisbon Animated Film Festival is the oldest cinema festival in the city and its 10th edition will occur between 21 and 27 March 2011.
CMYK will be participating under the ‘Super-shorts‘ category, dedicated to films of 2 minutes or less.
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