Shadows don't diffuse when rendering in OpenGl
by Jonathan Wiley
on
Jun 25, 2008 at 11:48:52 pm
Ok, I just got my 8800 drivers updated so AE now works in OpenGL. This thing smokes! 6 sec. OpenGL renders that take software renders 3 min.
My last hurdle to overcome is now diffused shadows in OpenGL renders come out hard edged. Light falloff looks great but the shadows go hard. Of course everything works in software renders but those renders take exponentially longer.
I suspect I might be able to override software settings in the nVida control panel. I tried tinkering around a little bit but came up with nothing. If anyone knows how to resolve this issue, the help would be much appreciated. Thanx in advance.
System
2xDual core Opteron 280's
8 Gigs NUMA DDR 3700
8800 gtx 512 (g92)
Win XP x64 (sp2)
Re: Shadows don't diffuse when rendering in OpenGl by Dave LaRonde on Jun 26, 2008 at 3:27:05 pm
[Jonathan Wiley]"Ok, I just got my 8800 drivers updated so AE now works in OpenGL. This thing smokes! 6 sec. OpenGL renders that take software renders 3 min... My last hurdle to overcome is now diffused shadows in OpenGL renders come out hard edged."
I hate to rain on your parade, but Open GL just ain't all that great a thing in AE. Here's why: AE supports only a subset of the entire Open GL command set. It's almost impossible to design an AE project of any kind of complexity around AE's Open GL capabilities, as you seem to have discovered.
Every AE practitioner I know of who dabbles in Open GL eventually gives up on it, dismissing it as a bad job, turns off Open GL and gets on with life. So what do you do for speed? Enable AE's Multiprocessing capabilities, which may be even faster than Open GL.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's just how it is. Yes, I know the Adobe propaganda says AE supports Open GL. The same propaganda also says AE supports interframe-compressed codecs like MPEG2, and compressed audio like mp3, both of which are real belly-laughs.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Shadows don't diffuse when rendering in OpenGl by Jonathan Wiley on Jun 26, 2008 at 6:24:59 pm
Yeah, I was really hoping they had made up some ground since version 7. I figured things were hopeless. I assume there aren't any plugins that use their own lights that do support opengl? (i.e. Zaxwerks Invigirator Pro) Looks like C4D will continue to do all my heavy lifting. You'd think that Adobe would be a little more pro-active about getting stuff like this fixed now that they have Motion nipping at their heals.
Re: Shadows don't diffuse when rendering in OpenGl by Dave LaRonde on Jun 26, 2008 at 6:40:43 pm
[Jonathan Wiley]"You'd think that Adobe would be a little more pro-active about getting stuff like this fixed now that they have Motion nipping at their heals."
Don't count on it. The mp3 compatibility issue has been present in AE since version 3, if not earlier. Look at all the progress they've made.
But you really owe it to yourself to investigate multiprocessing in AE8.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Shadows don't diffuse when rendering in OpenGl by Jonathan Wiley on Jun 26, 2008 at 7:44:10 pm
Oh totally, that was the first box I checked in preferences after I installed CS3. I also installed a script I got on Adobe exchange that allows me to continue working while rendering. No need for Nucleo, which everyone tells me is buggy as all get out with CS3.
