Hello,

As I'm trying to overcome iClone rendering limitations, I've made a test using multi-passes approach as we often do in production.

This allows for more than four shadowed ligths, the correct use of ambient occlusion ( not in the diffuse ) but also this solves a big problem I had trying to get ambient occlusion maps into the 'Blend' material channel : memory ! Because using unique uvs imply using very high-def textures for baking diffuse, bump etc.. Up to a point I couldn't load this set into iClone. The set is 'UrbanFuture3' ( Daz3d/Stonmason ) that I've imported into Softimage|XSI. From there I was able to create a second set of UVs, bake ao maps, etc.. then export 2 versions ( one for each UVs set ) into iClone through 3DXchange :







You can download a short animation here :

iCloneMultiPassesTestA.mov ( 1280x546 | 2:35 | 24fps | 10527Ko )

As you can see I have anti-aliasing problems but that is to be expected with raw OpenGL anti-aliasing ( and perhaps my card is not enough ).

Would be great to have an 'enhanced' anti-aliasing mode into iClone though

That said, multi-passes rendering is an option not to be forgotten, even with iClone, as this gives you far more power than straight rendering, albeit at the price of a 'little' more work.

Cheers,
Guy.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

All I can say is "Wow." That video is amazing.

I am still not clear on how you achieved multi-pass rendering in iClone. Would you mind giving us some more details on how you achieved this? Thanks!

Cathy

Just click on the graphic to go there.

very nice effect - multi-pass as in rendering as in layers and compositing ?

Hello,





Yes indeed, sorry, I should have been more explicit on the procedure.

I've rendered several times the same scene/animation, but each time I change the 'appearence' of what's on screen to get specific information per render ( pass ). Then the passes are loaded in a compositing software ( this can be done in Blender, for instance ) and assembled in a specific way to obtain the final image.

Here is a little animation showing the involved passes ( I did not show the transparent surfaces though, that has to be treated separately, but I guess you'll get the idea ):



This is a technic largely used in production ( vfx, commercials, 3d animation movies, etc.. ) wich gives a lot of flexibility. You can for instance, re-render only the 'Albedo' passe if you are unhappy with your textures, then composite again. Re-rendering this pass is extremely quick as no lighting is involved. You can also add an unlimited number of 'Lighting' passes to overcome the 4 shadowed lights limitation in iClone, etc..

Here I only used a few passes, but I plan to add more for local lighting near some visible light sources. The 'Ambient Lighting' uses IBL, albeit IBL can also be used for main lighting ( without shadows though ).

The color coded lighting pass deserves some explanation I guess : With 3 lights in your scene that overlap somhow, it is very convenient to color code each light, one red, one green, one blue. This way, in the compositing software, you can separate the three ( by extracting each color component ) and adjust them independently ( level, color, .. ) but you only have to render once. This is an old production trick as well.

If you have more questions, don't hesitate.

Cheers,
Guy.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Excellent job Guy, you do have some fantastic skills man, but you do realize that 95 % of the people here will not be able to do that, right? Not because they are not able but because in order to micromanage an image like that, requires a lot of experience in both 3d and 2d. There are way too many complex techniques here, from creating the compositing layers , to the remapping of uvs, to the baking, etc, etc, etc...
It is great that you are trying to use iclone as your rendering platform for making the layers, and the 2d/3d pros will see this as an advantage in some situations. I also believe you are correct about the antialiasing issue, at render time they should use a better algorithms to avoid the crawling semihorizontal artifacts. This is great experimentation. Thanks for sharing your findings.

sincerely,

Stuckon3d



Product Specialist

My iClone 7 gallery

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Hi Guy-

I do understand what you are doing now and realized I could probably achieve something similar to break the 4 light limit by shooting multiple passes with green screen in iClone and compositing the shots in After Effects. BRILLIANT! I don't know why this never occurred to me! This opens-up whole new worlds of ideas.

Thanks so much!
Cathy

Just click on the graphic to go there.

Hi Cathy,
if you are going to render in layers you are better off saving them as image sequences with alphas, it is much cleaner output than trying to do green screen and then trying to key out the green.
Also, when 4.2 comes out, layering will become much easier.

Cheers,

Stuckon3d



Product Specialist

My iClone 7 gallery

My IMDB

" Also, when 4.2 comes out, layering will become much easier. "

Is that a hint? Is that a hint?? LOL

Cathy

Just click on the graphic to go there.

you saying we are thick ?



I Make My Mates Do The CanCan For The Amusement Of Killer Robots

Hmm it does LOOK complex... however I think if I knew how to seperate the layers it'd be a bit easier... it'd also be easier if I knew how to set up the UVs in XSI... however I think that's only for something you're importing from an external source. If I'm making the scene within iClone I don't think I should hav a real issue with UVs since most of it is a complex maze of 3D blocks anyway.

But I can't quite understand how you get all those different layers out of iClone... is that possible to do already? (multipassing I mean) hmm...

*caugh*tutorial*caugh*

and what's this I hear about 4.2?

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