An Important Question For All of You

In my last post I mentioned that I will need to disable motion blur if I wanted to get the animation rendered in a reasonable amount of time.  This is because I render motion blur by rendering the image three times, and then those three images are blended together to make a single frame.  This also lets me cheat fake soft shadows by using hard shadows but "spinning" the lightsource in a tight circle.  This means the shadows will be offset a bit in each of the three images that then get blended to give pseudo soft shadows.  A whole lot of cheating going on here. :)

Anyway..  There is a tool I have had my eye on for many moons called "RSMB" or "Reelsmart Motion Blur" that applies motion blur as a post-process effect.  The blur can be derived by having the tool analyze the changes between frames and "auto" blurring.  It also has a more accurate method that uses a 2nd render pass.  This render pass renders very quickly, but it contains vector information that tells RSMB where and how to blur.

https://vimeo.com/130816568

So what is the point?  Well if I only need to render the animation at full quality once and then apply RSMB, I can use true soft shadows which do look better and take less time than 3 passes with hard shadows.

In the current scene Naomi takes over 8 minutes to render 3 passes with sharp shadows.

If I used RSMB I could probably change the lights to soft lights and render a single pass in half that time.

3-pass faked MoBlur with blended sharp shadows: ~16 days

Single pass Sharp shadows with no mo-blur: ~6 days.

Single pass with true soft shadows and RSMB: Possibly 10 days

It was my original intent to survive on the money I make on the 1st to eat for 2 months while I continue to get caught up on the animations.  RSMB is around $190.  There is no way I could afford to get it.

But..  If I skip the plan next month and resume charges every-other month after that, I could afford to get RSMB, boost the render quality and reduce render times.

What do you think?  Would you support me doing that?  If me getting caught up is more important to you then I completely understand and will take what I make on the 1st and live off of that for two months as I get more work done.

Let me know what you would like me to do.  Thanks!!!!!