Project Poster

Still Rendered Frames of Work-in Progress

Rendering Issues

I have had a great deal of trouble with rendering out my Maya animation project. Even though I started testing the rendering process more than a month in advance, in anticipation of problems, I was not able to render everything in time dur to the issues I faced.

These issues were due to:

• Problems I had with my file not working. For example, once I transferred my files from my PC to remote access through OneDrive, the file paths refused to connect.
• The rendering time being per frame was too long. I managed to get this time down from 55 miniutes to about 26 minutes per frame due to cutting and downsizing as much as I could. However, each stage of the process took a long time due to this long render time.
• Render farm issues (constantly failing). I have asked for assistance from the tech department, but due to a lack of responses, I could only try to fix problems by myself.

Here are screenshots of my render farm submissions and the many failed outcomes:

The lower the number of frames I made the more successful the renders (e.g. 1-5). The larger the number of frames (e.g. 200+) the more failed sequences I had.

All of these renders are for my FMP. ‘Showreel’ refers to a render sequence I made for my portfolio of work of my FMP environment.

On the screenshot labelled ‘page 3’, you can see the first test render I made for the FMP which was dated 25/10/22.

Outcome of the render

Disregarding the rendering time and process issues, the visual outcome of the renders were mostly successful. Unfortunately, I had to re-render the shots multiple times due to issues such as file path disconnections even though I checked on these constantly), unsmoothed mesh, incorrect mesh secularity, and hair flickering. By the end of the rendering process, I had about 3 renders per shot due to these issues alone.

The hair flickered bolder and lighter in certain frames. Unfortunately, I was not able to solve this issue in time. Even after many re-renders. See the images below. Although this was very subtle, you could still see this when the sequence is put together in Premiere.

Another error that I occurred during the rendering involved this:

Even now, I am uncertain of the cause of this effect. However what I experienced was 1 or 2 frames rendering out like this. To solve this issue I simply deleted this frame within premiere. Adjusting the sequence duration if necessary.