Topic: FBX Issue ? ~ 20 seconds per frame render.

[cryptonx]

Hi all,

We (the firm) got into lumion for doing quick wip visualizations before doing final work using Vray for our clients, some times we made even some small 30  50 seconds animations just as a preview of the final process.

however we were pushed to create a 6-7 minute walkthrough animation of a Sporting Club project, the model was completed in 3Ds Max and exported as FBX and imported back in Lumion,

The only problem is, after adding the trees/materials all the effects the FPS inside Lumion is barely 4-5 fps, If I turn off the layer of the Clubs Model it jumps back to 25 or so.

the PC running lumion is a core i7 with 8 gigs of ram and a Radeon 6950 2 GB card.

So I am really doubting that my model (a hasty job) is doing all of the SLOWDOWN.
The problem is I am very very short on time ( the animation is rendering as we speak)

I've seen the faq and tutorial for exporting and found nothing special to do but there was no guideline either for modelling/polies ... I dont think the model even has that much of polies but it has alot of Renderable Splines and un-attached objects and groups.

If i somehow managed to make a Huge Editable Poly of the complete model and reload it, would that help

or should I try something other than FBX ?

attached is the 3D Model quick render from 3Ds Max so it would give you an idea and a quick render from Lumion.

Thanks

EDIT : even the 3 buildings that you see in the image, are imported as a seperate FBX file and they are fast inside and lumion and render fine without the rest of the model.

[Morten]

Hi cryptonx, experimenting with FBX exports is only going to cost you time at this stage.

If I were really short on time, I'd add a Smooth Edges effect (which essentially is the fastest anti-aliasing option there is in Lumion). Just make sure you add it while Entire Movie is active (as opposed to adding this effect to each clip):
Entire Movie -> New effect -> Color Effects tab -> Smooth Edges

Then set the quality to 2 stars in the Save Movie window and render the animation.

Sure, you won't get the 16x subsampling in 2 star mode, but hopefully your client will be more interested in the design than in inspecting individual pixels while looking for jaggy edges.

[Morten]

Btw, you didn't mention if the frame rates figures, ie, 4-5fps vs 25fps were with F8 (shadows) and F9 (all trees rendered at their best level of detail) turned on?

If you're using IES lights in your scene, you should consider making the lights static - this tends to improve render times dramatically:

[cryptonx]

Thanks alot Morten,

Unfortunetly am not the designer, we only do the Visualization, so PIXELs will matter and I don't want to stop the current run but I am hoping I can render faster next time because am sure tomorrow or so (by the time the animation will finish rendering) i will need to fix some stuff as having to create something Artistic with only 4fps in the editor is really horrible !

I can't even lower the stars or the resolution as the client questioned why some of the materials look a bit different than our LAST renders (Realtime vs Vray issue ).

I am still gratefull for Lumion tho as we would never have accepted such a job in the first place without it (modeling,texturing,animation and rendering in 5 days or so).

I just hope i can fix that fbx/model issue if needed tomorrow for any additional renders or work

here's a sample render that the client liked..

Thanks for your fast reply and concern.

[cryptonx]

Just saw your 2nd reply, sorry,
No am not using any Lights, just the sun/sky system.

however you reminded me, is it normal that from Aerial shots like the one I posted, the Shadows tend to be more blurry and soft ... even with the shadowrange slider @ max, they still look like shadow maps from the old times not ray traced ones, is this normal ?

[Morten]

however you reminded me, is it normal that from Aerial shots like the one I posted, the Shadows tend to be more blurry and soft ...

Yes, ufortunately, the shadows don't have unlimited resolution and range in real-time 3D engines.

When you increase the Shadow Range slider, the resolution of the shadow map will be reduced, so you basically want to set the Shadow Range slider as low as possible in each clip (use Scene effects -> Shadow Range effect), so that you get as crisp shadows as possible.

[cryptonx]

ouch, all of the clips even the close ones are on maximum shadow range ! I wish i knew this earlier, I will try to stop and continue from the next clip with that value in mind.

[Morten]

By the way, which version of Lumion are you using?

[cryptonx]

Am not quite sure now, I left the office but it was 2.xx something .. 2.2 or 2.1 i guess. the IT people just updated it for me yesterday.

[Morten]

Good stuff, I hope it's 2.1 Build 3 which was released on Friday. There are some crucial bug fixes in this version.