Fz Fire animation suggestion

[Des]

Hi Pylon et al,

 

While playing around with animation using maxwell, I've noticed that objects/components aligned with the camera don't align in the maxwell frames. It makes sense that it is not compatible as the model would have to write out the main mxd file for each frame (to take into account the rotation of the objects in the file) instead of what it currently does (write out the "BASE" mxs with the model info and much smaller files which I assume are just the camera positions).

 

Anyway, as a quick workaround for a fast preview of a maxwell animation, I increased the resolution of the Fire render, set it to just SL5 and used the save image button to save out some frames. So, in the animation time line, I click "next frame", let it render in Fire (few seconds), click save image and keep doing that. Then I have all the numbered and rendered frames in a folder which can be made into an animation.

 

So my suggestion is, would it be possible in a future release of the plugin that this process could be automated?

 

I use aligned to camera objects all the time and it would be really cool to be able to animate using Maxwell somehow.

 

Thanks for reading..

 

Des

[pylon]

Hi Des,

 

Animated views and objects go in each of the frame mxs files. Currently, we cannot detect if Components are set to face the view. We just requested that ability from ADS, so when it comes available, we'll make sure those Components are placed into the animated frames MXSs. At that point, rendering out the animation will work as expected.

 

Thanks for making us aware of this issue.

[pylon]

Hi Des,

Re: Components 'Align to View,' We still don't have an SDK function to determine is an object is defined to align to the view, but we implemented a workaround in the latest beta. There's an option to treat ALL component instances as animated, so they will always be included in the animated frames. Of course, if you have a lot of components in your file, this will result in heavy animation frames. There's now also a option to disable the Base MXS in animations entirely.

Its the best we can do for now; maybe write to ADS and refer to our "CASE 58  Get Component Align-To View Parameter" if you'd like the real deal.

Hope this helps.

[Des]

Thanks so much for following this up. I think it would be beneficial to anyone doing animations and have the option to render in Maxwell.

I almost always use billboard planting for my projects and the align to camera feature in FormZ is so handy (I remember the days when having to physically rotate the planting to the camera for each view).

 

Another benefit with having maxwell recognising the align to camera is when sending to a render farm for multiple still shots. Say I have 5 saved views for a project, I have had to save out a maxwell mxs for each view because render farms such as Rebus will see all of the saved views ok but the planting is only aligned for the active view. Therefore the model needs to be uploaded 5 times.

 

Am I correct in assuming that we now only have to upload once with the 5 saved views still images rendered with the planting aligned?

 

Regards,

 

 

Des

 

 

[pylon]

Am I correct in assuming that we now only have to upload once with the 5 saved views still images rendered with the planting aligned?

 

 

No, for stills, you will need to export each view if you have view-aligned components. As of this writing, Maxwell does not support entities that always face the active camera within the scene. (So, when the view facing component is exported, it's just a plain object in the Maxwell Scene that can't follow the view if it's changed in Studio or in a renderfarm.)

 

You could conceivably make a 5-frame animation, in which each to the 5 views is a keyframe, but this would seem like more work than simply uploading 5 files.