Marcos Fajardo's FMX talk about Arnold is available...

[El Burritoh]

The FMX 2011 website has posted Marcos Fajardo's talk entitled "Path Tracing and Unbiased Render", where he discusses all kinds of rendering topics, mainly focusing on Arnold Render.

Go here (http://www.fmx.de/media/streaming-archive.html) and search for it by clicking the left arrow.

Awesome presentation! Lots of others that look great too...I haven't checked those out yet...

[Aleph]

Really interesting video. Thats awesome that he featured some of Lee's work in the presentation.

[Infinite]

Tim: Thanks for the link, very interesting.

Really interesting video. Thats awesome that he featured some of Lee's work in the presentation.

Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for mentioning, I hadn't seen that video.

[ianucci]

Interesting stuff. Those volumetrics at the end blew my mind, and he said they were rendered in two minutes on a laptop?!

[Kel Solaar]

Interesting stuff. Those volumetrics at the end blew my mind, and he said they were rendered in two minutes on a laptop?!

And the laptop is a Mac :)

KS

[jack_sparow]

yes but to clean the noise you need much more time, that's the issue with arnold, you can render pretty fast a frame with lot of noise but cleaning it for production is much longer.;)

[Infinite]

yes but to clean the noise you need much more time, that's the issue with arnold, you can render pretty fast a frame with lot of noise but cleaning it for production is much longer.;)

Not quite true. You just have to know how to set the scenes up correctly :cool:

[jack_sparow]

Not quite true. You just have to know how to set the scenes up correctly :cool:

Well you know I used it on production and I still use it a lot at my house on a laptop and devellop some shader and dso to it so I know what I'm talking about, I'm not a newbie, Arnold is not very fast all the time even if you set your scene at a very optimized level. And the level to optimize the scene is pretty reduced compared to renderman renderer, so it's still expensive to compute free of noise frame on complex stuff. of course I'm not talking about just a simple scene without lighting and object interaction. Arnold is pretty noise in the shadow area and that's because of it's algorythm. you can't optimize that, you just can increase the sample value. ;)

[Kel Solaar]

Well I guess Arnold is maybe not the fastest renderer out there for everything, some renderers may sometimes be faster in some areas (though most of the time slower), the main and unbeatable arguments for me is the ease of use, the speed and comfort you'll get to the right result by only tweaking a few parameters. Neither Renderman, MR, Vray or any other renderer are close to offer the same flexibility while maintaining such a friendly workflow.

In the end that's where Marcos is 200% right, 8 hours cpu time will always be cheaper than 8 hours of a guy struggling to get an image or optimizing his scene to have it rendering.

KS

[meshmasters]

.....In the end that's where Marcos is 200% right, 8 hours cpu time will always be cheaper than 8 hours of a guy struggling to get an image or optimizing his scene to have it rendering.

KS


Well said :thumbsup:

Cheers,

Joe

[Infinite]

Well you know I used it on production and I still use it a lot at my house on a laptop and devellop some shader and dso to it so I know what I'm talking about, I'm not a newbie, Arnold is not very fast all the time even if you set your scene at a very optimized level. And the level to optimize the scene is pretty reduced compared to renderman renderer, so it's still expensive to compute free of noise frame on complex stuff. of course I'm not talking about just a simple scene without lighting and object interaction. Arnold is pretty noise in the shadow area and that's because of it's algorythm. you can't optimize that, you just can increase the sample value. ;)

Another winker. I can never quite get my head around that emoticon. :rofl: Whether it's emails or or on-line chat, people love to wink. Am I missing something?

No I didn't know you had used it. I can't tell as there are no links in your profile, so I can't remember the work you do.

Well I guess Arnold is maybe not the fastest renderer out there for everything, some renderers may sometimes be faster in some areas (though most of the time slower), the main and unbeatable arguments for me is the ease of use, the speed and comfort you'll get to the right result by only tweaking a few parameters. Neither Renderman, MR, Vray or any other renderer are close to offer the same flexibility while maintaining such a friendly workflow.

In the end that's where Marcos is 200% right, 8 hours cpu time will always be cheaper than 8 hours of a guy struggling to get an image or optimizing his scene to have it rendering.

KS

Well said Kel.

[jack_sparow]

Yes thomas you right and I totally agree with the point that arnold is very easy to set because of the nature of it own algorythm, it's a pure physically based renderer so you have always accurate result using sampling and raytracing. Everything is driven by the algorythm and the way the shader deal with the sample to speed up the rendering. You don't have choice with raytracing to have faster rendering you need to compute less ray and to get less noise in an image you need to have a clever distribution of that samples, that's exactly what arnold do really well with lot of tricks to limit costly effect like motion blur or things like that.
I agree with you on the fact that arnold is very good for the cost of the industry because you are more concerned about computation power and computer than artists.( of course artists are expensive compared to computer cost), but the thing is with that phylosophie you are limiting the need of artists, because the renderer do everything, and the artist or technical director are pretty useless with a such system. That's on that point that I disagree with, I'm not sure it's a good thing for rendering artists to be replaced by computer, and it's a big threat for the job. finally To light and render in arnold you don't need any specific experience or talent, you just need to wait, and people will not pay you to wait the frame, they will pay you only for lighting the scene and push the button.
I know it's important for the industry to spend less money but it's a new way to work with those raytracer and I'm a bit afraid about how the artist and technical director could find a way to keep their job. I'm working in France so our status is specific here, If you don't work you will not get pay, you are not working for a company you are working on your own but not like a freelance, and here companies try to reduce the cost of the artist and the time you are working on production. This is just not good for our job.

This is the same stuff like replacing human by a machine and this is not really good for me, for ecology and for our planet! I know I'm a greenpeace kind of guy. :thumbsup:

[Kel Solaar]

Yes thomas you right and I totally agree with the point that arnold is very easy to set because of the nature of it own algorythm, it's a pure physically based renderer so you have always accurate result using sampling and raytracing. Everything is driven by the algorythm and the way the shader deal with the sample to speed up the rendering. You don't have choice with raytracing to have faster rendering you need to compute less ray and to get less noise in an image you need to have a clever distribution of that samples, that's exactly what arnold do really well with lot of tricks to limit costly effect like motion blur or things like that.
I agree with you on the fact that arnold is very good for the cost of the industry because you are more concerned about computation power and computer than artists.( of course artists are expensive compared to computer cost), but the thing is with that phylosophie you are limiting the need of artists, because the renderer do everything, and the artist or technical director are pretty useless with a such system. That's on that point that I disagree with, I'm not sure it's a good thing for rendering artists to be replaced by computer, and it's a big threat for the job. finally To light and render in arnold you don't need any specific experience or talent, you just need to wait, and people will not pay you to wait the frame, they will pay you only for lighting the scene and push the button.
I know it's important for the industry to spend less money but it's a new way to work with those raytracer and I'm a bit afraid about how the artist and technical director could find a way to keep their job. I'm working in France so our status is specific here, If you don't work you will not get pay, you are not working for a company you are working on your own but not like a freelance, and here companies try to reduce the cost of the artist and the time you are working on production. This is just not good for our job.

This is the same stuff like replacing human by a machine and this is not really good for me, for ecology and for our planet! I know I'm a greenpeace kind of guy. :thumbsup:

Hey Julien :)

You raised some very valid points, I was a bit bothered like you, not only for the rendering but also for about every discipline our industry, for example ZBrush came one day and changed the way we work (A revolution), I thought it would be a disaster for the industry because people would need less time to build their assets, they would be more precise, efficient, etc... In fact it proven to be the reverse, industry has never needed so many people to establish the polygons basis of films.
Its a bit like the render time, it has never really decreased along years, quite the opposite instead, the quality however has jumped in a spectacular way with nearly perfect visual effects where sometimes you can't discern reality from fiction.
For instance Davy Jones would not have been possible without ZBrush, advance in shading / rendering. Artists got more time to focus on the quality, being liberated from too much technical constraints.
Lighting is the same, we will still need a lot of lighters to get the shots done (More than before because there are more and more shots to do), they will however focus more on the artistic quality of their work than on the technical aspect.
What will happen to the technical artists? Well I think they will still have to provide shaders, tools, pipeline procedures to provide an even better image, they will maybe even have more time to focus on the quality of their tool and just on this.

You have the chance of being not only a great technical guy, but also a great artist, so I'm not too much worried about your (And our) future in the industry. The job may change, morph, but if its for something better then I'm all for the change :)

KS