Update 7/29/2019: Omar's new scene is ready to render and already underway on SheepIt. If you're part of the CG Cookie Render Monsters team, we'd appreciate you launching the SheepIt app on your computer to contribute. NOTE: Make sure on your SheepIt account "Options" you enable Render my team's projects first. Thanks!
Update 7/18/2019: Omar is polishing new scenes.
Update 7/3/2019: Omar has 2 new files ready for rendering. Let's do dis.
Update 7/1/2019: We have finished rendering two of Omar's reel projects. Way to go community. Omar still has several to prep for rendering. I'm going to unpin this thread and re-pin once it's ready to render again.
Update 6/17/2019: Omar has updated his shared project folder with new scenes to render. It was accidentally uploaded as a new folder so if you've already synced the previous folder, you can delete that one (if it's still there) and you'll have to sync this new one. From now on we know how to avoid this so no more re-syncing.
The time to render is now!
Update 6/16/2019: We've finished Omar's first 2 scenes! Way to go People 👏👏 Thanks to everyone for contributing. Now we're waiting for Omar to setup and upload his next scene.
@theluthier Kent after comparing the original Cycles renders and Element 3D real time ones, I think you are right, rendering it out of Cycles is totally worth going the extra mile for. Although you and Lampel said it was great, that it's 95% there, for a second I saw a twinkle in your eyes saying "C'mon dude, you know it, I know it... there is no spoon." And then the twinkle continued "No one eats an Oreo and doesn't go all the way to the stuffing in the middle, the cookie part is just enough". I see what you mean twinkle.
I didn't want to bother people though, but I guess if I'm going to try this there's no way around that. I don't know how to use Drop Box, I've never used it before. Should I get an account? I hope it's enough space. I remember you kinda set things up in a similar way in the Rendering & Finishing A Blender Animation course. I should re-watch that. I have never done things through the internet so this should be a learning experience.
I, Kent Trammell, am commandeering Omar's original post! [evil laugh] I'm the one that encouraged Omar to reach out to the community for helping him render his demo reel. My computer just sits collecting dust most nights and I'm happy to lend some rendering power to this project while I'm asleep. I suspect that there are a number of CGC community members willing to do the same 🙏
If you want to help out, please follow the instructions below!
The status of the project will be stated and updated at the end of the thread title in brackets. When it says "READY TO RENDER" that means a project has been submitted to SheepIt for rendering. If it says anything else, the project isn't ready for rendering yet.
The status of the project will be stated and updated at the end of the thread title in brackets. When it says "READY TO RENDER" that means it's ready to sync the project folder and start rendering. If it says anything else, the project isn't ready for rendering yet.
STEP 1 -- Sync Omar's project folder to your Google Drive.
If you have a gmail account, you have 15 GB of free Google Drive space. Just click the link and when you're redirected to the Google Drive website, right click on the "Demo Reel Files" folder and choose Add to My Drive.
If you're on Mac or Windows, use the official Google Drive app (personal version) to sync your Google Drive to your computer's file system.
Render_Scenes_1_Packed.blend
If you're on Linux like me, there is no official app. I've had some success with Open Drive but it seems to have stopped syncing on my system. I'm currently using Insync and it's working beautifully. It's $30 after the 15 day trial period, which I will likely pay.
STEP 2 -- Open one of the render-ready .blends with Blender 2.8
After the project folder has finished syncing *entirely* to your computer, launch Blender 2.8 and open Demo Reel Files > Blend Packed Files > Render_2.8-Scene_1_Packed.blend. Then follow Omar's instructions in the file for CPU or GPU rendering, whichever your machine is best equipped.
Enable viewport rendering to double check the scenes look fine (no pink from missing textures). I've tested these files myself and they should be ready to render without problems.
STEP 3 -- Render the Animation
The files should all be setup properly so anyone that opens them doesn't have to do anything but click the Render button.
That should be all you need to do to contribute rendering to Omar's project! Note that these scenes are heavy and can take an hour or more per frame, even on a high end machine, which is why Omar needs our help.
When the rendering is all done (or you need to stop and regain your own GoogleDrive space), simply navigate to the Google Drive website, right click on the folder and choose "Remove".
How about an update on progress? I just started rendering and an update would be super!
I deleted all the Scene 1 EXR's. I copied them to my local drive number 1, then made a copy in my local drive number 2, then I made a third copy on my backup disk.
In the Scene 1 Renders now lives a test frames video of the whole sequence.
dostovel Does that means that scene one is odne? Cause i just started rendering the 1st frame...
aarev Yes, it's done. Thanks you Arev. I put a video in there. I deleted Scene 1 so that that doesn't happen.
Now it's onto Scene 2. Frames beware, you're about to be annihilated, specially by 
phoenix4690 who's been like Legolas shooting those arrows.
dostovel Well hello there Omar, it was me.
On a side note, there are far too many LotR references during this project and I love it
brzostek Ah hey there Piotr, thanks for the help.
Wow there's already 50 frames down out of 163 I think. This one is going down fast.
williamatics A North America thing meaning "You Only Live Once". Unless you live there and you're a Buddhist and believe in reincarnation, then it's YOLAB" You Only Live A Bunch.
*Thibaut has joined the game*
Great job with scene 1 folks! Had some issue yesterday but now it seems to be going smoothly with scene 2, talets 9-10 minutes per frame so far.
Its so cool to see the live update on drive, seeing the exr files updating with different owners name is so satisfying: real teamwork, I’m impressed it goes so smoothly.
dostovel Omar, regarding the glitches you mentioned yesterday (duplicated files) it could happen when two users start simultaneously to either render or place a placeholder. With many user at different world location plus different connections (lag time) it could be a reason to that.
tbrbn Yeah, also I've notice when people come in later when there's a large number of frames already rendered, when you don't wait for the folder to sync, Blender doesn't know there are already frames rendered and it duplicates them. So for example There's already frames 1 to 50 in the shared Drive folder, when you log in for the first time, your Google Drive account has to download all those files in order to catch up, and when you've only let it sync say from frames 1 to 8, when you hit Animation, Blender will start on frame 9 even though we're already in frame 50, so it duplicates the frames.
It's so cool isn't it? to see the team work update and sync live with each file. I think Kent knew how all this goes since that's how the CG Cookie Wise Sages work and he wanted us to have a sense of it. Just throwing out a conspiracy theory out there.
dostovel I'm sure that how the Elders of CGC do it yes :)
Would be great if the placeholder system be improved, a simple text file with the list of rendered frame would be lighter to sync and appending it would be not so hard to do either. Then with drive or dropbox we could skip syncing the rendered images and start directly with the blend file and the text file contaiing the list of rendered (and being rendered) output. Maybe the blender developer should consider it, I'll check that 🤔
I just want to make sure, you render with 500 samples, is that correct ? I followed the instructions and didn't change anything in the blend file, but I read earlier in the thread something mentionning 1500 samples, can't find it anymore.
tbrbn Yes, initially I had the file with 1,500 samples and no Denoising, then Kent took a look at it and changed it to 500 samples with Denoising. Turn out it was better that way because renders are much faster now and the difference is unnoticeable, at least when it comes to animation, the compromise is very little and worth the speed bump.
It would be cool to have a system that is better at avoiding duplicates and better yet not having to sync all the files. I have no idea how that would go, and yet the developers are always doing black magic with the software.
And yes, the file is basically all set up, you just need to be mindful of the Reload-Trusted prompt, if you have available a GPU and the tiles accordingly. The instructions is more a reminder than anything else.
By the way Thibaut, your tutorials are great, you know some deep math stuff and hackery things. How is all that making a tutorial thing about? I always imagine myself thinking on how would I go about making a tut, all the stuff I'm going to record and narrate, practicing everything and then when the mic is hot and recording.... silence, I'd have a hard time putting a sentence together, I'd get that weird freeze thing that happens that your brain chokes.
dostovel alright I’m doing things right then :)
By the way Thibaut, your tutorials are great, you know some deep math stuff and hackery things. How is all that making a tutorial thing about? I always imagine myself thinking on how would I go about making a tut, all the stuff I'm going to record and narrate, practicing everything and then when the mic is hot and recording.... silence, I'd have a hard time putting a sentence together, I'd get that weird freeze thing that happens that your brain chokes.
Thank you Omar, it means a lot to me. I experience the very same thing you describe. In my mind I have the best punchline, the ideal way of describe how to do this or that, the perfect idea of how I can edit it and then... pitch black.
Now I got a bit more experienced so I start to have an improved workflow, but the difficult parts are always the same, what to say and how to say it. I think it’s fine NOT to describe everything, and go faster on some part: the viewer can then try by him or herself and also the question sections are perfect to elaborate specific points.
I usually rehearse a lot, if you give it a try you’ll find yourself repeating the same bit of sentence fifteen time until you get it correct. There’s different way to record, for the moment I prefer doing a voice over type of tutorial. It’s a bit more job on the editing part but recording is smoother I find.
It’s a learning process, especially if English is not your native language. I feel confortable enough in English but it’s still an extra difficulty so I write it down and improvise along. I gave up on trying to get a better accent also, as long as people understand me I think it’s fine.
You should give it a try, i want to learn from you !
tbrbn Yeah I think I'd be the kind of record in silence then dub it over later kinda guy, but I don't know if a magic of the moment would get lost in that and it would feel stiff instead of organic.
But nah, I don't think I have the voice pitch for recording. For some reason when I talk in english, I always think I sound like a six year old girl, plus I don't know how bad my accent in english is. And all I know I've learned from Kent and CG Cookie so I don't know what I could teach really. You seem to have experiment with stuff on your own.
All I had ever done (until this point in making the portfolio), was freelance work, stuff that clients wanted me to do, I had never done CGI for myself, so I've never had time to do experimenting. That changed a bit when Kent started doing Live Stream classes. In those I was able to squeeze a bit of time to do the assignments and that's about the work that made it into the portfolio. Other than that is client stuff, which is always boring and with each change they tend to make things worst.
When I have some time to learn how to play the guitar just for fun, this is the kind of stuff I'd like to know how to do.
dostovel I would love to learn from you Omar! You could teach how to make realistic and awesome looking tires.
My 'modeling a tire' excercise was a mess, and I know lots of people struggle with it... since you are a tire wizard, it would be great to have a tutorial from you on that topic!
One tutorial on how to create tires, and one tutorial on shading them 😇
