Shadow Motion blur

[giganerd]

I did a test to see if shadows recieve motion blur, and with a basic render set up I discovered they do not, with raytraced or depth map sadows, the test was a ball rocketing throught the srcreen it was a blurred streak with a perfectly round shadow on the ground- is there something "special you have to do in Maya's connection editor or something to get 3d motion blur on shadows, 2d motion blur yeilded the same results.

[petternicklas]

hi!

thats just how it is...do get moblur on shadows do it in comp.

see u

manne

[tbriggs]

This is a hack but it might work in some situations. Make a plane to recieve the shadow and make it a child of the shadow casting object. Make a shader that is transparent where light falls and opaque where it is shadowed. It will recieve the shadow and it will blur. This would work with 3D motion blur. With 2D motion blur the blur vectors are calculated for the entire object, not just the opaque part, so it would blur everything under the shape.

/*In theory there is no difference between theory and practice
In practice they are very different*/

[giganerd]

That is a good idea, but it really wouldnt help much for I need which is real 3d motion blur, like if a guy is standing still and swats with his arm, the child wont get and translation data from a joint moving, . . . oh well,. . . thanks Maya ...maybe they will fix it in release 20 hehehehehe

[meta-nerd]

Motion blur and overall lighting-shadowing just plain sucks in maya. And it looks like it will continue to go that way for 3.0

My advice, look at other packages. It seems like everyones answer to maya's rendering shortcomings is to fix it in post. Why should you have to motion blur a freaking shadow in post? Isn't maya suposed to be the "best 3d package available today"?

[petternicklas]

hmm...ohh, for me it is the best package available! i care for workflow and a creative enviroment. To be able to set up a character and animate it exactly as i want...small stuff like shadow moblur...bah

you know, most animations are in some way passing though a comp program anyway.

see u

manne

[blk]

i agree maya is the best 3d package around for me the workflow the power in its modeling and animation so what if it doesnt have the best renderer thats not the most important part you can have a beautiful renderer but if the animation part makes you have to pull teeth to animate then who cares about the renderer and besides with how easily you can intergrate Renderman into maya with Mtor ALfred and SLim the renderer isnt that big of a problem

[giganerd]

I can see you guys point about so what if the render isnt as good as the rest of the package, but lets face it when youre all done at the end of the day youre render is what people see, and if it is weak, it will show regardless of how good youre animation is.

The reason I get so upset with maya's renderer is because if fails where so many other(and cheaper) packages just rock!
take Lightwave for instance, the very root of this forum was solved in 2 seconds, I just turned on motion blur and guess what the shadows blurred just fine, I mean lightwave has an awesome render, I know some people at studios that have just blown me away with it, and I just dont see how something like Maya can be so bad when it's supposed to be so good, don't get me wrong I like maya but when it comes down to render time youre almost forced to convert youre scene over to lightwave or renderman and it is just annoying that you have to go through all these hoops in youre workflow

one software, one world - same day -

uuuummmmmmm I feel much better-

[blk]

Your right your renderer is what you show people at the end of the day
but a great render cant save a horrible animation but with a great animation you can still have an ok render and itll be better
Take a bugs life done in renderman if it had been rendered in maya it would still kick ass
its a sad day when the renderer is makeing or breaking an animation

[meta-nerd]

That comment was a little dramatic. I think what he is saying is that you've got to have both if you are working in the post business. My clients are not going to see the beauty in my animation if they are too busy looking at how shitty thier commercial looks. How is that going to sell thier product. The bottom line is that both render quality and animation quality are equally important. So naturally one would want to be able to achieve hiqh quality in both. Relying on compositing to constantly fix what other programs do well already seems silly and expensive to me. I think that unless you work at some huge 3d house that has mel programmers on staff and your doing tons of complex character work, you should examine other programs. Programs that better fit your needs.

[blk]

but you see you can get a good render and a quality one at that to show people look at the bingo animation it was rendered in maya and that looks great you just have to put time into it
and while Maya's renderer may not be the best ill put up with it to have the one of the best damn modeling and animation modules around
Max for instance may have a prettier looking renderer but it doesnt even have real nurbs so ill give up a little on the renderer to have a better model
and you can make brodcast quality renders with maya whats an ntsc render around what 600 x 400 or 640 x 480 not really that high resolution when you think about it
and trust me things look alot different on your tv screen then your monitor i have a video card that allows me to output to tv and my tv and monitor are both the same size 19 inch and there is a huge difference specially with things like dvds and when i look at a render ive done on the tv alot of the little things that bother you about the render go away cause theres sooo much less resolution and the sharpness isnt there to show every little flaw
it seems to me when something goes from computer monitor to tv it gets a little blurred just slightly so things seem to smooth out a bit

[meta-nerd]

I didn't think bingo looked that great.