Arnold

Discussions about rendering in SOFTIMAGE©
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Rork
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Re: Arnold

Post by Rork » 10 Feb 2011, 12:13

This info was added on the si mailinglist:
Hello list,

My name is Florian Bruchhaeuser and I am the ceo/founder/TD of Lafourmi Postproduction.
Thanks a lot for interest and the great response regarding the Subaru "Car Parts" Commercial. I will try to give you some insides about our workflow in addition to the info Sebastian allready gave you.

Key to this project was and is Arnold and the great integration into XSI. We bought our first 5 licences 4 weeks before starting this project and another 5 one week into the project. Sebastian, Tim and the other artists allways complained about the difference between there beauty render and the first beauty Compositing. Since openEXR we render around 20 passes. After rendering the compositors start setting up there trees or use a nuke gizmo to combine the stuff. In the days of MR shaders there was no way to get a 100% match in comp to the beauty render of the 3D Dept. So I asked Marcos from Solidangle about the insides of the Arnold Standard shader - 10 minutes later I had the source code! We started taking the standard and wrote every information out to AOVs - everything - direct diff, indirect diff (with shadow and without) spec, refl Fresnel, PP, Nf etc.. 20 in total. Then we rebuild the combination of this information inside the standart shader into a nuke gizmo and wrote a simple export tool to get the shader setting from xsi to nuke. Now compositing had to import the AOVs, autoconnect to the gizmo, import the settings and everything looked like the beauty render in 3D. The compositors now had the same standard shader interface in the gizmo. We ended up with 54 AOVs.

In addition to our new laa_suepershade we wrote a shader for simple ambient env lighting (renderman style SIG 2001 - ILM) called laa_envSphere and laa_textureSwitch to switch textures and change there exposure with ice attributes. We also used the Nuke API for the first time to create some relighting tools to use the Nf, PP and I AOVs for simple lambert, phong\blinn speculars and rim lighting in nuke.

Regarding the pipeline question of MAC: Everything here is based on Rubi on Rails. Great to get data in and out of a database without spending weeks with php and mysql syntax. First of all there is JOB.Bitch in development for the last 2 years. This is the major tool for artists to get information about the project there are working on. Shotlists with thumbnails, tasks, progress etc. This database is also called by our inhouse opener and saver tools. The artist sees the information through a web interface or directly in XSI when saving or opening. There is also a kind of subversion system for saving - so no more finalFinalV66.scn. All this on a per artist base, so can see and open the last scene Sebastian was working on etc. Same system used for nuke opener and saver. So our freelance nuke artist (with own machines) had to connect to our tools and where able to open and work on shots right away.

New and used since this project is Render.Bitch - also based on ruby on rails with webinterface etc. Each renderfarm machine runs a client (python) which communicates with this database. The "renderOnFarm" command get the information about the project from the JOB database - shot, renderversion, framerange, resolution - The artist defines if he want to do the Arnold export on the farm or local (good for not baked sims) - On submit the command puts the information (xsi scenefile, package size etc) into the database - Now every free client on the farm checks for new jobs in the database starts to render and reports progress to the database. Update in the webinterface is realtime with the possibility to see error logs, requeue frames, manage pools etc. The python client was developed by Philipp Oeser and thanks to Arnold and this system we where able to render 1,98 million files in 8 weeks with around 50 error frames total on 10 machines!

Again, thanks to all the artists working like crazy on this piece and thanks to Solidangle for the greatest support ever!!
rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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rray
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Re: Arnold

Post by rray » 10 Feb 2011, 13:28

Interesting, thanks, cool naming scheme for the inhouse tools *-:)

whole thread here, archived in google groups
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

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Re: Arnold

Post by Zafar Iqbal » 13 Feb 2011, 06:20

Awesome insights.. thanks.
- Zafar Iqbal

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Re: Arnold

Post by Rork » 15 May 2011, 15:20

Hello all,

Some more commercial work done with Softimage and Arnold:

2011 Work:

Korona - Nozon
Lamborghini Aventador - Sehsucht
Cooler Graveyard - Talvi Digital
Audi A6 "Manipulation" - Glassworks London
BIRTH Foundation Against Cancer - Glassworks London
Wrigley's "Everyone" - Glassworks London
IGA "Vraiment Frais" - SHED
Subaru "The Car Parts" - Lafourmi Postproduction/Directors Cut
ATT "Coverage is a Beautiful Thing" - The Mill

2 0 1 0 work

Vinamilk "Jump" - The Frank Barton Company
Vinamilk "Jump" - The Frank Barton Company
La Ronde - SHED
Helsingin Sanomat - Talvi Digital

Enjoy!

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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Re: Arnold

Post by Zafar Iqbal » 15 May 2011, 15:53

Nice - thanks for the links.
- Zafar Iqbal

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Re: Arnold

Post by Rork » 31 May 2011, 09:17

New commercial from SHED:

http://www.shedmtl.com/en/products_from_quebec
enjoy!
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Re: Arnold

Post by origin » 31 May 2011, 09:44

Those SHED guys make awesome commercials...both animation&shading looks AAA+++ Are they SI house?

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Re: Arnold

Post by Rork » 31 May 2011, 09:48

afaik they use Softimage for (al)most all work.
They probably have some other 3D apps lying around as well.

And they render with Arnold of course ;-)
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Mathaeus
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Re: Arnold

Post by Mathaeus » 31 May 2011, 10:01

origin wrote:Those SHED guys make awesome commercials...both animation&shading looks AAA+++ Are they SI house?
according to all questions :) about ICE hair, by Dominik from SHED, definitively they use SI a lot.

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Re: Arnold

Post by SreckoM » 31 May 2011, 15:41

Those SHED guys make awesome commercials...both animation&shading looks AAA+++ Are they SI house?
Yep, they are.
- H -

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Re: Arnold

Post by Gith » 07 Jun 2011, 17:31

Another cinematic by Digic using Arnold (as i assume)



Anyone knows is Digic is using Maya or Softimage for their cinematic pipeline?

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Re: Arnold

Post by Rork » 07 Jun 2011, 17:36

hehe... you beat me to it ;-)

I was still gathering information on the Arnold chatlist. It's basically all Arnold with a pinch of V-Ray and FumeFX.

And Digic is Maya mostly, with Max and Houdini in the mix as well for this trailer. If I know more I'll add it here.

rob
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Re: Arnold

Post by origin » 17 Jun 2011, 15:12

dunno if its legal, found it on polish max forum

edit:
Ive deleted this info..anyway...source is in max3d.pl forum, section softimage..if anyone interested (like solidangle lawyers)
Last edited by origin on 17 Jun 2011, 15:26, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Arnold

Post by Rork » 17 Jun 2011, 15:21

edit of original post:

There's still an NDA in place for all companies using Arnold atm, so I'm guessing this will disappear from the forum soon......
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Re: Arnold

Post by TwinSnakes007 » 17 Jun 2011, 16:21

All I can say is wow...Arnold must really be something special.

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Re: Arnold

Post by Rork » 17 Jun 2011, 16:23

It's simple economics; time spend on getting MR to work/render, as compared to faster setups and renders.

And yes, after working with MR for years, I find Arnold to be a breath of fresh air, as most users will confirm ;-)
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
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