we’ve just started using deadline and draft and have a few basic questions that I couldnt find concrete info on.
Firstly is it possible to encode to avi at all the documentation only mentions quicktime files and options.
Secondly with the draft tile assembly jobs from deadline how does draft handle the padding amount? in some passes such as GI it does have hard edges between tiles so doesnt look like it does a blend the way I was imagining.
Cheers
Dave
To encode to an avi file, simply use that extension on the filename. Are there avi-specific options you’re looking to set that aren’t available currently?
You are correct that the Draft tile assembler does not do any blending. Is this something you’d like added to the wishlist? How would you expect the blending to be computed?
Hi Dave,
re:
So, our tile, region or even newer, Jigsaw rendering systems when used with a renderer such as VRay, where a “secondary illumination” is used, require for this “secondary/Global illumination” to be calculated effectively once / pre-calculated and cached. Otherwise, each rendernode will calculate a slightly different result and when the separate ‘regions’ are assembled by Draft/TileAssembler, then you will see a hard-edge where they join. In terms of VRay, then Chaos Group have various methods to resolve this via pre-calculating this information. More info can be found here:
docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY … iple+Views
docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY … +Animation
docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3/Light+Cache
Has the AVI writer been fixed? Last we tried it was unusable in adobe applications and quicktime based apps.
Gavin: You were using RAW. Using the default codec, the AVI file I get works fine.
Oh, what’s the default AVI codec? Is it uncompressed? That’s actually what we wanted.
The default for Draft:
Brings up the question then about what codecs / options are valid especially as it only mentions “Valid codec values are: ‘MPEG4’, ‘MJPEG’, ‘H264’, ‘DNXHD’, and 'RAWVIDEO” as you’ve pointed out.
As an actual useage case we use the cineform codec (now owned by go-Pro) as our editting format, which has its own option flags etc.
In regards to the tile rendering we have been doing what Mike suggests from other posts of submitting the lighting seperately. In a lot of cases if the padding amount created a fade area of one tile over the other (premultiplied over?) it would be enough to cover most lighting artifacts for the large format stills we do and would streamline the submission process.
Cheers
Dave
More information on the other parameters can be found in our encoder documentation at: http://forums.thinkboxsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=10649
If you have suggestions on how to improve our documentation to make it more useful, please do let us know.
One wishlist item we have is a DNxHD helper (or DNxHD profiles) to help with settings for DNxHD. If there are similar items you think would be useful, again, let us know and we’ll add them to the list. We also plan to expose more setting options for export in future releases of Draft.
As cineform is a proprietary codec, it would probably require licensing, so I’m checking with Ian.
For the fade area, do you have a preference of a specified number of pixels, or as a percentage of the width/height? Would the gradient in the fade region be linear or a different function? Have you been using this method in other software, to confirm it gives the results you expect to see?
Ian is looking into the cineform codec. If others are also interested in it, please add your +1s. Thanks!
We’re interested the Cineform as well…
Thanks
Noted, thanks!