[Experimental][Video] Farah breaking in her heels

This is not the feature preview I mentioned previously (that's coming). This is an experiment, towards reintroducing more reasonably animated content back into the game without rendering for a million years.

I've converted a test to a gif, at reduced framerate because gifs are FAT. We're still not allowed to upload vids here.

Most animations in this format generally like to do massive concessions in terms of physical accuracy of the movement, especially when heels are concerned. Kinda floaty and all over the place. I did a bunch of micro corrections even though the tip of the heel may still puncture the floor, but the movement is fast and fluid enough for it to be hidden.

Rendered at 1280x720, the HD without the Full prefix, it took around 11 minutes targeting 95% convergence. The scene is rather simple (just Farah and a ground plane), so it's easy to attain a high level of convergence. It scales fairly linearly, it would take around 22 to 25 minutes for a 1920x1080 output for 3-4 seconds @ 30 FPS or 6-7 seconds at 15 FPS (as shown in the gif).

As I've reworked my animation workflows, next step will be investigating how fast I can get it to run. Some things I am currently considering:

Render frames at 1280x720 and AI upscale to 1920x1080

Render frames at 3840x2160 and downsample to 1920x1080

Reduce framerate to 15 FPS and use framegen like interpolation tech to get to 30.

Or even less, for 24.

If I can get decent anims to render in under an hour per pop, it might be worthwhile. That would be the average time equivalent for 6-7 8K mainline content renders (downsampled to 4K and further as needed for user screen).