Daz Image_Serie

[VeritasLex]

Hello.
I have the following problem. When I render an image series, the hair always flickers. or the shadow.
When I look at the individual images, nothing is visible.
I'll insert a video so you can see what I mean.

Additional information:
Render: Max Samples 5000
Max time 7200
Resolution 1920/1080

I had to change the size of the video because it was too big
Can anyone perhaps help me further?

 

[Turning Tricks]

Hello.
I have the following problem. When I render an image series, the hair always flickers. or the shadow.
When I look at the individual images, nothing is visible.
I'll insert a video so you can see what I mean.

Additional information:
Render: Max Samples 5000
Max time 7200
Resolution 1920/1080

I had to change the size of the video because it was too big
Can anyone perhaps help me further?

I honestly don't see any flickering in your video. Seems to play fine on Firefox and when I open it with Media Player Classic.

Are you viewing the video in the editor you made it?

It's a nice video. One thing I could suggest though... she has a dead stare because her eyes are not tracking anything. You could make a NULL and place it in behind the camera and then select each of her eyes and change POINT AT to the NULL. Then, when her head moves side to side while walking, her eyes will move slightly to track that NULL.

There's issues with the Point At thing though... stuff Daz has had forever and still never fixed. Sometimes, when you open the DUF, the eyes get confused about where they are supposed to look. You can fix this by either (1) selecting the eyes and changing Point At to NONE, then back to the NULL - or you can (2) select the NULL and move it just a click up or down. usually when you move the target, the eyes will snap back. Finally, when you plan on running a long queue of renders, open the DUF up and check the eyes track properly before starting the series. If you just put it in a queue and it loads and starts automatically, you have a 50/50 chance the eyes will bug out on you.

 

[VeritasLex]

I honestly don't see any flickering in your video. Seems to play fine on Firefox and when I open it with Media Player Classic.

Are you viewing the video in the editor you made it?

It's a nice video. One thing I could suggest though... she has a dead stare because her eyes are not tracking anything. You could make a NULL and place it in behind the camera and then select each of her eyes and change POINT AT to the NULL. Then, when her head moves side to side while walking, her eyes will move slightly to track that NULL.

There's issues with the Point At thing though... stuff Daz has had forever and still never fixed. Sometimes, when you open the DUF, the eyes get confused about where they are supposed to look. You can fix this by either (1) selecting the eyes and changing Point At to NONE, then back to the NULL - or you can (2) select the NULL and move it just a click up or down. usually when you move the target, the eyes will snap back. Finally, when you plan on running a long queue of renders, open the DUF up and check the eyes track properly before starting the series. If you just put it in a queue and it loads and starts automatically, you have a 50/50 chance the eyes will bug out on you.

Thank you for your reply.
I have taken another series of pictures with a different background and lighting. If you look at the forehead now, you can see it clearly.

 

[Turning Tricks]

Thank you for your reply.
I have taken another series of pictures with a different background and lighting. If you look at the forehead now, you can see it clearly.

Okay, I can see it now.

When you post process these, are you doing it on the figure by itself, then adding that layer to a set background?

Because when you apply filters (such as the Camera Raw set of filters in Photoshop, as an example) ... sometimes the filters have a very different outcome, depending on the 'size' or 'amount of pixels' they have to work with.... it's hard to explain, but for example, you apply a filter to just a foreground figure on a transparent background. The effect off that filter will change a little bit if it's on a background. I think it's because filters run their algorithms by examining all the surrounding pixels and then determine the final effects to apply.

I'm explaining it poorly, but it means that if you took this figure in one frame and applied a filter that bumped the exposure up 0.25 for example... the effect would be different if you applied that to just the figure on a transparent BG, over if you layered the image on the BG first and then applied that effect to the full frame.

So during an animation series, the amount of pixels for the filters to use for it's calculations changes because you model turns her head and what not. For the most consistent results across hundreds of frames, you should assemble your parts and then apply any filters you want to the whole frame renders.

I don't know what your normal process is, but I usually render the series as normal. I then drop all those frames into my denoiser. Then I do any touch ups in photoshop. Finally, I create a custom Action in Photoshop to first assemble each frame by adding the animation render to the background, and then apply the filter I want to that completed frame.

I see you have a reflection in that mirror behind her... so I was wondering if you are actually rendering the whole series as complete with the background?

In either case, my gut feeling is that effect under the hair has something to do with some post-processing that is being done after you render the frames. It's also possible that this is just a strange artifact from DAZ and that particular hair asset. There's probably some animation filters out there that could normalize that effect. Or maybe you can try running this series through DAIN and seeing if that normalizes it some?

My animations are still pretty crude, so I am working on that more than anything right now. I'd love to have this being the problem for me, lol!

 

[VeritasLex]

Okay, I can see it now.

When you post process these, are you doing it on the figure by itself, then adding that layer to a set background?

Because when you apply filters (such as the Camera Raw set of filters in Photoshop, as an example) ... sometimes the filters have a very different outcome, depending on the 'size' or 'amount of pixels' they have to work with.... it's hard to explain, but for example, you apply a filter to just a foreground figure on a transparent background. The effect off that filter will change a little bit if it's on a background. I think it's because filters run their algorithms by examining all the surrounding pixels and then determine the final effects to apply.

I'm explaining it poorly, but it means that if you took this figure in one frame and applied a filter that bumped the exposure up 0.25 for example... the effect would be different if you applied that to just the figure on a transparent BG, over if you layered the image on the BG first and then applied that effect to the full frame.

So during an animation series, the amount of pixels for the filters to use for it's calculations changes because you model turns her head and what not. For the most consistent results across hundreds of frames, you should assemble your parts and then apply any filters you want to the whole frame renders.

I don't know what your normal process is, but I usually render the series as normal. I then drop all those frames into my denoiser. Then I do any touch ups in photoshop. Finally, I create a custom Action in Photoshop to first assemble each frame by adding the animation render to the background, and then apply the filter I want to that completed frame.

I see you have a reflection in that mirror behind her... so I was wondering if you are actually rendering the whole series as complete with the background?

In either case, my gut feeling is that effect under the hair has something to do with some post-processing that is being done after you render the frames. It's also possible that this is just a strange artifact from DAZ and that particular hair asset. There's probably some animation filters out there that could normalize that effect. Or maybe you can try running this series through DAIN and seeing if that normalizes it some?

My animations are still pretty crude, so I am working on that more than anything right now. I'd love to have this being the problem for me, lol!

I don't edit any of the images. I leave them all as they come out of Daz and then I throw them all into Renpy and that's it.
I tried using stronger lighting, but then you can clearly see this effect on the hair.
I've also tried rendering even higher, but the result is always the same.
I have also tried different hair, HDRIs etc but always the same.
My guess is that it has something to do with the shadows.
By the way, when I use higher lighting, for example, you can clearly see dots on the skin as if the denoiser was not triggered. (sand effect)

 

[Turning Tricks]

I don't edit any of the images. I leave them all as they come out of Daz and then I throw them all into Renpy and that's it.
I tried using stronger lighting, but then you can clearly see this effect on the hair.
I've also tried rendering even higher, but the result is always the same.
I have also tried different hair, HDRIs etc but always the same.
My guess is that it has something to do with the shadows.
By the way, when I use higher lighting, for example, you can clearly see dots on the skin as if the denoiser was not triggered. (sand effect)

Are you running DAZ's own denoise script as you render? Because that can have inconsistent results. Most everyone I know does the denoising in Post. I use the Declan Russell Intel denoiser with the

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. You literally just select the whole pile of animation renders and drag them into this GUI and it does them all (takes about 5-6 seconds per render for 1080p size)

I didn't realize you were running this as an ATL animation directly from Ren'py. You might get a better result running the frames through a simple filter first and then making a webm with them using FFMPEG. Seriously, you can make a 1080p webm in literally a minute using FFMPEG. And it will save you a ton of space (a webm that is 2 or 3 secs is like 1.5MB, instead of 120-180 frames at ~450kb each).

Other than that, another technique you can try is render larger than what your finally product will be. So if you are using 1080p renders in Ren'py, maybe render the animation frames at 1440p and then downsize them. That will usually result in a more consistent and nicer 1080p result. That's a very basic adage for graphics... always work from large to small, never the other way.