Rendering Issues, Still Frames and Poster

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:

Page 1. Render farm.
Page 2. Render farm.

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.

Page 3. Render farm.

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.

Lighter hair and eye brows.
Bolder hair and eye brows.

Another error that I occurred during the rendering involved this:

Single frame rendered error.

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.

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