In its efforts at being a ‘deep dive‘ center of learning, Mumbai based FX School, a training institute for CG Animation, VFX, Film, and Photography, is amongst other things, focusing big time on production rendering knowledge, especially on Mental Ray.
This focus of the school has evinced a very positive response and has prompted the school to create and devise a short module that will explore the various nuances and tips and tricks around Mental Ray. The module is scheduled to start on 16th November 2009 and will be preceded by a free webinar on Mental Ray on November 1 (at noon).
Speaking to AnimationXpress.com, the FX School Management consisting of Abhyudaya Morarka, CB Arun Kumar & Dinanath Gokhale shared, “There are two main production renderers that studios use: Renderman and Mental Ray.
The use of both of these is as much of a “dark art” in India as it is a science. There is a desperate need to shed some light and thus enable studios to achieve better results more efficiently. In fact, our hope is that this pro level course will provide a quantum leap type improvement in studios‘ ability to handle their work. We begin by attempting to dispel some of the mystery and mystique that surrounds the use of Mental Ray as a production renderer.
What many do not know is that Mental Ray is at least as powerful a renderer as Renderman. In our two-part training program, we enable artists who are familiar with Maya to up-skill themselves to expert level Mental Ray renderers.”
The workshops are primarily targeted at entry-level professionals as well as advanced-level students involved in lighting, rendering, or shading related work and will be useful for those currently working on Mental Ray. “We are encouraging students and artists to come forward with specific queries and are focusing on knowledge sharing which is the key to the effectiveness of such workshops. A working knowledge of Maya is a pre-requisite for attending this course.” They added.
“Rendering, as I see it, is not just about “Rendering,” it is “lighting,” “shading,” and “rendering.” However, the problems faced in those areas are also termed as “rendering problems,” shared Bibek who is the chief faculty for Mental Ray at FX School. He listed some of the common challenges:
Render takes a very long time
Jittering and Flickering
Reflections not matching with the live plates
Workable passes — too few or too many
Motion Blur for passes
Lighting Fur with Mental Ray
Optimizing scenes for Mental Ray
He further elaborated that, “Challenges can be many faceted… from files not rendering to taking huge amounts of time to do so. But, the biggest challenge lies in getting the right look for your work. This is where Mental Ray comes in. Since we are looking mostly at “realistic outputs,” Mental Ray provides you with tools which are “photo-real.” It is a “physically accurate renderer” which, in layman‘s terms, means that it obeys most of the laws of physics and tries to simulate real life settings as closely as possible. This is the main power of using Mental Ray.”
“Still, the problem in India is that we have made categories for artists which might be serving the purpose of the studio, but, what happens in reality is that there is no one who has a complete knowledge over the entire process. So, the problem may be with the “modeling” which causes your renderer to crash, or it might be a problem with UV sets, or it can be a problem with the rig, or perhaps the shaders are problematic, or maybe the lighting! In such a situation, the challenge comes down to the rendering issue, but, the rendering guy is ill equipped because he only knows how to render!”
“Or take the case of a VFX studio where the generalists are expected to pull of entire shots. Unless they really go into the depths of the software they cannot really solve the above issues. So they turn to other what we call “brute force methods” which are inefficient but fail safe methods. But, these brute force methods can only work short-term. They consume tons more resources. And, in many cases, cannot solve the problem. We cannot expect to execute a VFX movie like say Matrix with such inept knowledge.”
“Let me explain using a small example in motion blur,” continued Bibek. “To understand motion blur you need to understand how the software calculates the blur. But, in India we have to constantly try different settings and render the entire sequence to see if it works. To find out if a “motion blur” has worked, a sequence of shots have to be rendered. This trial and error method can become painfully time consuming. If we are unable to finally execute it after numerous attempts, then we have to try to pull off the blur in post! What‘s worse, once the shot is over we almost never do a “post-mortem” to understand what the issue was so that we are better prepared the next time. The ugly truth is that we are actually out of depth in tackling such issues and challenges and most of our studios do not encourage this type of research. As we all know, without R&D departments we are clearly not equipping ourselves for a bigger slice of the global animation and visual effects pie?”
“The fault may not lie with anyone specifically. The raw economic realities and financial considerations have driven our priorities towards output concerns and need of the hour based project approach. As a result, we are constantly firefighting!”
“For us to be as good as the west, we need to go deeper technically as well as creatively. Again, taking the Matrix as the gold standard benchmark, I ask who in India will be able to do shaders like that of Agent Smith‘s suit?
Mental Ray, as a renderer, provides you with the immense power of control. The power to simply achieve better results, more efficiently. It is our job to help you skillfully wield it! ”
“Our hope is to address highly specific topics to help the growth of more technically oriented artists so that they can slowly start on the path to making custom shaders and fine tune production problems like I have mentioned above.”
“We hope our efforts will show on screen within the next few years and we can see something like a Benjamin Button or a Transformers or perhaps even something grander being made in India,” concluded Bibek.
FX School is conducting a webinar on Maya 2009 render pass system for Mental Ray with a focus on Blending a photorealistic CG output using Mental Ray with a live action plate. Topics covered will include: How to successfully take out passes? What passes do I need to create that perfect image? How to crack the Maya 2009 render globals window!
The webinar takes place on Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 12 noon (IST). This free class will be held online. Participants need to register at www.fxschool.in/webinar. Please post any questions you may wish for us to address in the “comments” box.