https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_LsfwfEAe8

Little Star Wars animation test!

Using the Mecabricks lite add on.

Nice tuck and roll there Owenator13. What are your render settings? Looks very matt so guessing that your render time must be good. Or are you matting your models backgrounds?

I have found myself bogged down on the true to life renders with a lot of gloss which is giving me L O N G render times. Me thinks I must rethink it or this next project will take 2 years at 1hr45 a frame @ 25 fps.

I noticed that Dino5500 & raptor5120 (two of my personal favourites) on youtube have similar rendering characteristics to yours with a much more matt finish to their models. They are both prolific producers of animations, almost one a week each so they must have their render times right down and still have great animations.

Going too far on the matt I think makes them look more cartoony and spoils the effect. What do you think? Have you experimented?

I didn’t play with the settings this is just how it turned out on default. I used SheepIt! Render Farm and the render took around 8-10 hours I think. If I tried to render it myself it would’ve been much longer. I’ve purchased the Mecabricks advanced add on since and the only settings I play with are adjusting the roughness, dents, dirt and scratches settings, also I’m now using Filmic Blender. For that animation test, all it is is Mecabricks lite, with the default sRGB colour management (not filmic blender)

Are you using the Mecabricks add on?

Yes, using the Mecabricks add on. I have made a few animations with it and very happy with the results it gives. Definitely worth the money.

I have just now downloaded the latest Blender 2.8 Beta and am trying to get passable results with EEVEE which is supposed to take renders that take hours render in minutes, but struggling to get any sort of passable results even after sitting for hours watching tutorials on it. Seems capable of very passable results almost as good as cycles, but just about in real time, so renders taking seconds where before it took 30 minutes.

I am experimenting with it on my oldest machine an old pentium 3.3 with 8 gig ram, and while the results are not what i want yet, the rendering is very quick, might be worth your time looking at it. Will make an animation that took weeks or months to render under cycles available in hours.

If you do try it out, would be very interested in your feedback.

I have been experimenting with EEVEE but since the Mecabricks add on isn’t compatible with 2.8 you can’t exactly use it. You are supposed to be able open a 2.79 project with an imported mecabricks model in 2.8, but when to switch to EEVEE, any decorations don’t seem to show up for me. Scrubs said that he plans to make it compatible with 2.8 and eevee once the official release comes out. Ill be sure to look into it more when that comes out. But for now I can’t seem to get it to work.

https://youtu.be/vP5kXXVR8k0

Based on this video (this is not using the add on) I’m sure the potential future Mecabricks add on for EEVEE will look great! EEVEE has all of potential.

Oh Poop. That is what I was afraid of. Glad its not that I was unable to make it work though.

Will wait patiently in the wings for when Scrubs gets a chance to sort it out.

Hey Sommer123456 - You inspired me to try and make up a poster for the next animation.

Looks great!

Looks great well done!

Made a Western Shootout Animation with Blender and the Mecabricks advanced add on. Super happy with the realism.

https://youtu.be/n3KAhWJ1YCw

Hey Owenator 13. Brilliant animation. Love it.

Camera angles and movement giving atmosphere, Excellent background, the sound effects and music, the works. AND HD. Well Done

I noticed a little noise though in the renders or is that just Youtube? Did you use Denoise? What were your render settings?

think its youtube, I'm pretty sure I used denoise.

My render settings were 350 samples with denoise.

Clamp was on and I used an HDR for lighting

Still Brilliant though, Looking forward to your next project

My latest animation, John Wick Action Scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v😮k48ZWQSMIY

Brilliant. Good job.

Poor John almost had his arm pulled out of its socket holding onto the knife at the end there. Lucky Lego Minifigures arm joints are strong.

Cycles or Eevee?

I am getting more and more comfortable with Eevee, just got to get the shadows worked out properly.

Cycles.

I can’t get EEVEE to work with decorations. They render out transparently. Have you figured it out? Also cycles is way more realistic but EEVEE’s render times are very nice.

Definitely, the rendering time is the only reason I have stuck with it. I am rendering in Eevee in 5 minutes that takes 2 days with cycles. The quality admittedly is not up to cycles standard but if you are very careful with shadows & reflections and getting the light right (That's where I am right now battling to learn to get the lighting under control) it does make a very acceptable result, well I think so, AND I get to put out a greater quantity of amateur quality videos then I would with cycles. Cycles cant help my lack of artistic talent unfortunately.

I find I had to change all the Mecabricks shaders with Eevee or I get all manner of different issues, with computer hanging especially the image textures so I have have lost most of the lovely textural scars, scratches, fingerprints etc.

For the transparent images problem, try use Principled BSDF shader with image texture, and in the materials setting tab set Blend mode to Alpha blend and Shadow mode to Alpha clip and Clip threshold to 0.5. Works for me. Make sure you deselect show backface.

Also for transparent, try using blenders transparent shader but set the Blend Mode to Alpha blend as Transparent does not play nicely as it does with cycles. A lot of work around needed for transparencies and reflections & shadows but it does pretty much get most of the way there. The time spent on setting it up is well saved with the render time.

Lighting divide Cycles strength lighting by 10 at least. I also found that Ambient set to 10m helps as well but as I learn more that may change.

Thanks!

Do you have a YouTube channel? I’d love to check out your animations

I like to think I am getting better each video I upload. I cringe in some parts when I watch the first few.

Great job on your John Wicks Video.

I enjoy taking the sound tracks from movies and using that with my models.

Thanks for asking - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkVTGa7GRVlmQHxHosIsTlw

I am busy with a Star Trek video but trying hard to use Eevee now as this video is 44 minutes long. I think I am going to post it in two halves as soon as I get this last scene sorted. I have used a mixture of Cycles and Eevee so far but Lighting in Eevee is not as straight forward as with Cycles, and I am battling with all sorts of noisy artifacts in my renders as well the models to look similar as with Cycles.

I thought it would be a simple case of appending lighting from one scene to the next, but that is not working and I am having to re-light each and every scene even though they are all in the same place.

Once I get the noise story sorted, I think it will be viable to animate with Eevee.

Looking good!