How To Render Environment For Demo Reel

chilemang

Hi guys so i am in my senior year at school i will be rendering some of my environments for my demo reel, i know i have to animate a camera, i was wondering if anyone knew a good way to go about rendering my environment with a batch render including lights and ao passes any help is appreciated

Eric Chadwick

Best thing is to put it into a game engine. Rendering in a 3D tool usually looks odd, but if you put it in a game engine that is another plus on your portfolio.

UDK has Matinee, so you can animate the camera and render it out to a video file.

chilemang

we only have unity at our school do you have any pointers how i could should it in engine?

DireWolf

Unity has a free version. You can download it here.
http://unity3d.com/unity/download/

Eric Chadwick

I would just record some FPS camera movement through your level. Fraps is great for this. You could also move the camera around in the editor and record that.

Dataday

UDK is also free and can render out individual images as opposed to just movie files. These images can then be compiled in a video editor so you can smooth footage. Along with UDK, you can make use of Marmoset toolbag for individual or small groups of assets.

Whatever you do dont render out your reel in maya/max with different render passes...that is if you intend to work in the game industry. Real time engines and knowing how to work within them is a must.

Meteora

Dataday wrote: »

UDK is also free and can render out individual images as opposed to just movie files. These images can then be compiled in a video editor so you can smooth footage. Along with UDK, you can make use of Marmoset toolbag for individual or small groups of assets.

Whatever you do dont render out your reel in maya/max with different render passes...that is if you intend to work in the game industry. Real time engines and knowing how to work within them is a must.

Oh thank god. I won't have to waste many hours doing render previews in Maya/Max.

... Except now I have to learn a game engine. Which game engine do you think is the easiest to pick up and sees large usage in the industry?

Eric Chadwick

The most used engine seems to be a custom in-house one, at least in my experience. Can't learn that unless you're there, so the next most popular seem to be Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, and Source, loosely in that order.

Wikipedia, although incomplete, mostly supports this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines#With_related_games