Just received a call from a client that wishes to change the project resolution to 12x 4k.
So basically I’ll have to make 1 scene/static camera with a duration of 3 to 5 minutes and split this up into 12 4k renders.
I work with 3dsMax and After effects and am now wondering what the best approach would be for something this size.
The scene itself will be relatively simple (looking from inside the water upwards to see the ocean surface and a bunch of fish swimming by)
At the moment I assume it’s best to do as little as possible in post production as I don’t believe that AE can handle 1 giant composition of 50k pixels wide…
If anyone here has experience with these kind of giant resolutions, I would love to hear any tips / tricks / warnings.
AE can handle gigantic canvases. I’ve done a couple wrap around LED banners for stadiums before that were around 20-30k pixels wide. Tile rendering though does make sense in this instance. Maybe just don’t assemble the tiles until you’re in AE. I found it helpful to be able to turn on and off segments.
Yeah, I had the same in mind with regard to assemble the tiles in AE (also just for frame-file-size point of view)
I haven’t used AE with deadline for a while now (got tired of updating AE+plugs across the farm) and in general I just handle HD.
How is AE with rendering giant resolutions? Can I just multiply the regular render times with the amount of tiles or is it exponential?
Any suggestions on what to avoid? Or isn’t there much that can break easily on larger scale?
thanks!
ps. I am doing a simple test now… so will find out most things in time. Just figured it would be quicker to ask
In such case I would first try to seat in the room where the 12 x 4k will be projected and figure out if you can render 2K or even 1K and get away with blowing it up in AE or with the projector. It depends on the size of the room and the screen. Just make test and judge by eye, not by theory. Sometimes it’s surpring or 720p can look almost as good as 1080p. And i made some test with max rendering in 4k, it was a real pain in the pipeline!
I would also advise on deploying a proxy workflow with AE, as it is VERY slow when working with EXRs.
Draft can do this very nicely, even the lin-to-sRGB conversion and spitting out JPGs of each render (which you will have to manually link as proxies inside AE).
We just used this on a big 4K job and currently run two shows 8K and 6K 50p each, works like a charm.
The proxies can also sit locally on a SSD, just make sure you untick the “use proxy” when submitting to deadline.
4k can definitely put a strain on a render node. I know a few customers do large frames like that in a time manner to ensure that no one machine is overwhelmed.
The test I did (50 frames of 12x4k ) went smoother in AE then I thought it would… as long as there are no heavy post-fx applied.
3d Render times skyrocketed of course… but that was expected.
The idea is to have x number of fish swimming around with a background of ocean surface. Each fish will be a seperate rendered layer.
I talked with the scripter and we’re looking to explore the option of using vray’s auto-crop to render each fish without having to store more space then really needed (for empty area’s of the frame). Then in AE put the auto-cropped part back into place so it swims properly over the canvas.
The background will be full blown, but will try to keep it as low-res as possible.
The problem with the space is that I cannot get to it. All I know it’ll be sliced up into 100+ small screens hanging 3 meters above ones head.
I also suggested we won’t be needed that gaint resolution with such a distance… so I hope they down scale it a bit (at the moment they asked for 15x4k…)
just in worst case scenario, is there a list of deadline approved commercial renderfarms?
Unfortunately we just don’t have the resources to look into the Deadline using render farm providers, so don’t have any recommendations to share, as a company.
