CakeInferno

Early render preview and upscaling

Added 2021-08-18 20:34:05 +0000 UTC

Hey guys! Here's a mini-update on the progress! First off, rendering is progressing quite well! I've spent the recent days polishing, tweaking, and optimizing the main scene, which is now being rendered. The ray traced background layer already finished a few days prior, means I was able to to put together a fresh preview! Note that it still isn't final whatsoever, as some layers like fog and SSAO are still missing here.

I had planned to also have a new playblast ready by now, but realized one of Zoe's lines had to be retaken for animation reference. Unfortunately Gen had fallen sick and hasn't been able to redo it yet, which is why I had to postpone it to the end of the month. Admittedly this is probably for the better though, as this gave me the chance to prepare the next render layer, which will likely be the one that needs the longest time to complete, hah!

Since doing full path tracing at 60 FPS is nearly impossible without having a little render farm, I needed to decide on a lower resolution for all the ray traced images. 1440p seemed to be the most I could do, as it kept the render time per frame between 2 - 3 minutes. To get the full 4K quality back, I used Topaz' AI upscaling algorithm, which frankly works wonders on CG images. It was perfectly able reconstructing all the detail and is something I can wholeheartedly recommend to every CG artist, as it might save you huge amounts of render time.

Thanks so much for sticking by everyone! I'll make sure to have a new playblast by the end of the month, along with some more render previews as well as things are progressing!