Cineversity

Hello,

So, I am doing a turntable style animation of a drum kit in a recording studio with Sketch and Toon and I am animating on the microphones by having them ‘draw’ in. As the animation renders I’m noticing that in some frames, previously drawn in lines will vanish and then return a frame or two later. My lines are set to Outline and Border, and aside from the color of the line, the fill, and the background, all other settings are at default. The anomaly only happens on the two objects being drawn in. 

Since this is a problem that only occurs in animation, and since there are a TON of options to this module and at least 3 places to access them, the usual poking about would take forever.

Anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks
-Will

Hey Will,

Try the following, (be in advanced mode of S&T):

In the “S&T Material” enable “Stroke”. Then Go to the Render part of the “S&T Material” and disable “Clip Stroke to Screen”.

The simple idea is normally to render and (!) calculate only what is on the screen, but that might cause trouble. So to allow to calculate outside the screen as well, makes the “stuff” visible for S&T. No clipping (hopefully) anymore. This might cause higher render times, so it is limited for the material you select that for. (Multi select all materials to set it up for the complete scene in one “step”)

Again, as I have no scenes file here, that is the best idea I have to that theme.

All the best

Sassi

Hi Dr Sassi,

  Well, I tried that with no change.  I can appreciate how hard it is to make guesses with no context.  Right now the project is too big to upload, and I can set about making an optimized version, but short of that, I thought I’d post the test render itself.  You’ll see that the drums look fine the whole time, but the mics, mic stands and cables seem to pulse like neon lights rather than smoothly draw on.  I am wondering if the S&T module doesn’t like to draw objects on while the camera in animating.  I have been tinkering with settings all day and can’t seem to find the right one….

Hey Will,

Just copy the scene, and delete everything but the one mic stand. I can’t tell anything from the video, really sorry.

Alternative: Check with the support.

All the best
Sassi

OK, back in the office and I have prepared the scene as you requested. I did leave the one drum which is close to the mic stand in the scene, in case it is having an impact.

Thanks for having a look.

- Will

Edit:  Ok, well depsite the file being only 2.1MB, I find myself getting this message: Error Message:  The uploaded file exceeds the maximum allowed size in your PHP configuration file  I do hate it when inanimate objects lie to you, as there is no chance of convincing them of the truth.   Anyway, I have hosted the file on my iDisk (sure am going to miss that).  Hopefully you can download it here:

https://files.me.com/williefrazier/8ffahz

Hey Will,

I finally found the file, after decompressing, as the name of the archive was different than the content…

You’re Mic stand is certainly not modeled for Sketch&Toon; use. Pretty much any Circle Spline in this set up has a Angle for intermediate points 5 degree, which causes a HUGE (!) amount of segments. Not needed at all and I would suggest even for hi res images (non S&T) to check the need for such. It feels more like left it on default not knowing how much trouble it cause. With 3 minutes of exploring and optimizing your scene I was able to reduce the polygon/segment count of about 5,000 less. Certainly a lot of time saved for rendering. But you have to dig deeper, and optimize the scene way more to have fun with S&T!

All theses resulting edges from the hi res settings in your objects lead to cover each other up, as an result you run into trouble—as described above in your initial post.

Several parts of the set up can be easily replaced with just a spline, like the little round objects on the Mic. Many polygon objects have too many polygons as well. It is hard to give for all cases detail instructions, but the Spline Circles can live with 36º instead of 5º (you might adjust this to your needs of course) the Tube Objects might be fine with 12 or 18 instead of 36 segments. Some other ‘organic” splines might work best with Natural intermediate points and set to 12.

I have attached the cable as an example. I used the existing Spline and placed a very special material set up on it. To get the outline. Compare the render times and well, this version works.
Note that I have set this up with Color instead of opacity, the middle color needs to match the background, to have the illusion that the cable can overlap.
All the best

Sassi

Hey Dr Sassi,

  Well, you’re right about leaving things largely at defaults.  It is my expectation, and not an unreasonable one I think, that defaults shouldn’t be a hindrance, but rather the best, most general starting point.  So, thanks for that, and I’ll make note.  Much of the high resolution nature of the models themselves though is out of necessity.  I’m essentially rendering two passes of a lot of these, one with S&T and another with the standard raytracer, and will be moving often between them.  Then at other times, the models will be involved in very close up, detailed shots again with full render, so the need for a lot of detail is there.  I was thinking that with S&T set on it to draw only borders and outlines, it would ignore everything else, so the need to make a whole separate set of models wouldn’t exist.  I know better now

I’ll have a look in a few at the scene file you provided.  Thanks as always for your time and insights.

PS, sorry about the difference in file name vs archive.  When I first tried to upload the scene, it was indeed still too large (8.1mb), so I removed materials and other bits to get it to the right size.  I had it named the same, so when I got the file too large error again I figured it was just one of those cached name issues, so I changed the name of the archive thinking it would make a difference, and of course it didn’t.  Odd though, because it seems like I recall a time when file extracted from a zip archive would bear the name of the archive, even if said name had been changed.  That was my expectation, so my infliction of confusion was not intentional.

Hey Will,

You’re welcome. Thanks for being open for my suggestions and “opinions”.

The way you describe your needs might lead to a set up that uses the detail adjustments, which is not simple for large scenes, but maybe work it. Nearly ever object can be created more or less from Primitives or Nurbs. With the Display Tag you can manage the details. Note that all Detail Tags can be elected at once, if they are “collected” with a Selection Object. My way would be to use a Set Driver/Set Driven kind of approach and adjust the Range-mapper Spline to get all states of the project in “sync”.

Having a set up that has this kind of a Mixer for detail, the initially invested time will pay of while rendering.

Other than that, many objects could be build out of splines alone for S&T, but in an instant “switched” back with a profile to a high res NURBS model.

I hope you find the approach that fits to you.

The Defaults, well, certainly arguable what fits the most set ups, as we all work differently and have often complete new challenges. I understand your input, but I have no answer to that, as a one size fits all does not exists. There is certainly an option to set a star of an object to your personal “default”.

Good luck with the project

Sassi