Below the last video, there was a question if
it’s possible to animate procedural clouds. This comment inspired me to create this video. Let’s
create a timelapse in the new V-Ray 6 together. Now, if you want to check out the final scene from
this video with an animated camera and sun, you will find the link to download
it below the video. Anyway, we will start by setting up the Daylight System. I will use the scene from our Animation
Training. I’ll put the link to it in the corner in case you want to check it out. Go to
Create, choose Lights, and click Daylight System. What is cool about this tool, you can
set up different locations and it will automatically set up the light according to the
specific place. I’ll leave San Franciso though. Here, we can change the hours. We can also set up a specific date. Ok, now let’s find out what time
there is a sunset with these settings. Basically, we need to find the hour when
the sun will be in line with the compass. In this case, it will be around 7.30 pm. Now, the important thing to remember. As we
use V-Ray, we need to change our sun to V-Ray. Click ok, so we will have VraySky. Ok, now let’s start interactive rendering. Here we go, all is working. Now,
if we set up a daylight system, it’s typically to have the
lighting correspond with reality. We can assume that our apartment
is in the direction of the west so we can rotate the compass to match this. This
way, we will see the sunset from the apartment. Now, we can adjust the size
of the sun for example. Ok, the value 3 works nice. Now, when we do the timelapse it needs to
take a while so we can see the changes. I would say we can render 2 hours before
and 1 hour after sunset so 3 hours in total. Ok, now let’s set the starting time, and
let’s adjust the render a little bit. We can start by adding the Exposure
layer. I will reduce the Highlight Burn. We can add some LUT on top of this. Let's see how they look. Ok, I like this one. We can reduce the intensity though. Ok, 0.5 looks fine. Ok, we can add the Curves as
well to add some contrast. We have the base done. Now, we need to figure out the shooting interval,
let’s use the timelapse calculator page. So first, we need to choose
what we want to calculate. Now, we can type the event duration which we’ve already decided. It
will last 3 hours in real life. We have the most popular Frame Rate set up, so 24FPS which means that during one second
of the video, there are 24 frames rendered. Ok, now we need to decide how long our clip, in our case the animation, will be.
Let’s say we want it to be 10 sec. And here we have our shooting interval. In real
life, we will need to take a photo every 45 seconds. And in our case, we
will render every 45 frames. As we’ve done our calculations, now
we need to set it up in 3d software. Now, click on this icon here
to open the Time Configuration. To make it easy to understand, let’s set it up as
it works in real life. We don’t have frames, we have time, our timeline will reproduce a 3-hours
period, so every frame corresponds to one second. So set the custom frame rate, and
in our case, it will be value 1. Let’s do quick calculations to
check out if everything is correct. So 1 hour has 60 minutes. As
one minute has 60 seconds, we need to multiply it by 60.
So now we have 1 hour in seconds. Let’s multiply it by 3 as the
animation will last 3 hours. So now we have the number of the
last frame we need to render. Now, to check out how many frames in
total we need to render, we need to divide this value by 45 because our shooting
interval is 45 so we will shoot every 45s. And we’ve got the number 240 which is the exact
number of photos, we’ve got in our calculations. So all is good. As we said previously, this value - 10 800 is
the number of the last frame we need to render. No, we can set it up in 3ds Max. So our start time is 1 and
the last frame - 10 800. Ok, so now we have our slider
prepared for animating. The last thing we need to do is to
set up rendering every 45 seconds. To do this, we need to open Render
Setup and type the value here. Ok, great! Now, it’s time for animating the sun. First, we need to select the object we want
to animate, in our case, it will be the sun. Then, we will click AutoKey. So we have start
position at 5.28 pm, and now, we need to move the slider to the end and set it up at 8:28 pm,
so 3 hours later as we’ve discussed previously. If you see these red outlines around the
values, it means that they have been animated. Now, turn off the AutoKey option. As we move the slider, you can see
the sun is moving. Easy isn’t it? Ok, now let’s select the camera as we
will need to adjust one more thing. Move the slider to the last
frame and turn on the AutoKey. And start interactive rendering. You can see that the image is pretty
dark, we need to adjust the exposure. However, if we change it, it will affect all the
frames and it will be too dark on the first frame. What we need to do in this case, we
have to animate the Exposure value. Make sure you have the Exposure Value type set up. Ok, and now we can adjust the Exposure
value, we need to decrease it. 9 looks nice. We can check how it looks on other frames. Ok, looks fine. Now, we can do one more thing to
make this shot even more interesting. We can animate the camera. We will
add some horizontal movement to it. Move the slider to the first frame. We can move the view to the left. And now, let’s move the slider to the end. We can set up the camera on another side. Turn off AutoKey. Now, let’s check the preview. We can play animation here however as we have lots of frames here to go through
the effect is not visible. So it’s faster to just move the slider. In real-life, we need to use special sliders
that help to create camera movement within, for example, 3 hours like in our case. This is a special rail that you place your
camera on and can move from side to side. So for video production, a slider with a panning
motor is a great way to get really nice tracking shots from one side to the other.
Ok, let’s go back to 3ds Max… In our case, I’d like to make
the linear camera movement. To do this, we need to open Mini Curve Editor. Click here. Ok, now click on these icons to extend
selected keys horizontally and vertically. Here we go, we can see the graphs. As we animated only in the Y-axis,
let’s choose this parameter. Ok, now we can select the start
and end point, and make it linear. Ok, we can close the editor
and check out the results. Here we go, the effect as we expected. As we have everything ready, we can set
up the settings to render the preview. If you would like to know what V-Ray settings
to use, you can watch my video on this topic which is by the way the most-watched video on the
channel. I’ll put the link to it in the corner. Now, it’s time to set up the size of the images. We can set the size quite small
as it’s only for preview purposes. At the end, we need to set up the
path where the images should be saved. The format will be jpeg. We can hide everything except the camera
and sun to make the preview render quicker. Hit the render button and wait
for all the frames to be rendered. Let me show you what I’ve got
after the rendering is done. Here are all my images saved, let’s preview them. Awesome! It’s working great. Finally, let’s animate the clouds. Ok, so let’s select the sun
and turn on the clouds option. First, we will set up the clouds
in the first and the final frame. We can start with a little bit of clouds. We can increase the Variety value as well. I think 0.2 works the best. I would like to add circus clouds. Ok, this will be our base. We need
to remember these values for later. Anyway, let’s move the slider to
the last frame and set it up there. We can increase the density of clouds. Maybe not too much, 0.5 will be enough. I want to add more circus clouds. Even more. We can test different Variety values. Hmm… I don’t like this
effect, I leave it as it was. However, I will definitely change the offset value
to make the impression that the clouds are moving. Let’s try 500. The effect is not
visible enough, we can try 5000. Ok, I’m ready to animate the values. Turn on AutoKey and let’s set the values. Offset X equal 3000 will be enough. I will leave the circus amount to 0.9. Density 0.5. And Variety was 0.2.
Ok, now let’s move the slider to the first
frame, and let’s set the previous values. Density - 0.4. Circus amount - 0.5. And Offset X - 0. Ok, turn off the AutoKey option
and hit the Render button. Let me show you the result. It’s looking good. Oh, there is some bug in some frames.
It’s probably because of the beta version. Anyway, tIt’s looking good.
That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? One important thing to know. Typically,
we could set up our timeline to 240 which is the number of renders we needed to
render. And render each of these frames one by one instead of each 45 frame.
However, I wanted to make it easier for you to understand and show you how
it works in real life with the camera. And this is basically it. Now, if you
want to play with this a little more, you can test different values in the Clouds
settings and create different scenarios. Anyway, if you want to download the final
scene with the animated camera and sun, click the link below the video. Also, if you are interested in this topic, you may want to check out our Animation
Training where we show you how to create the whole animation from start to finish. Click
here to find out more on our website. Bye, bye!
