[mitchrichie]

I'm trying to apply a image sequence with transparency to a object. In the maya preview window, I can scrub the time line and my image sequence works great, It even shows transparency. However when I render out with maxwell, I only see frame 1 of the sequence, and the transparency doesn't work. Is it possible to do what I want?

Here is a frame, the black around the numbers should be transparent.



UPDATE:

So it turns out some transparency is working, just not as I expected:


Maxwell seems to make white transparent and keeps the black. I can work around this but it still doesn't solve the problem as to why the image sequence isn't working.

Any Ideas?

[Mihnea Balta]

I've just tried using an image sequence with a Maxwell material and a Maya lambert shader, and it worked ok in both tests in batch render mode as well as Maxwell sequence rendering (after exporting all the frames as MXS via File->Export). There is indeed a bug which causes the transparency texture to be inverted when native Maya nodes are used, but the animated texture itself worked.

We'll fix the inverted transparency bug in the next build, but please provide more details about the sequence problem: did you use a Maya material or a built-in node? How are you rendering your animation?

[mitchrichie]

I have not yet tried rendering out a batch render or Maxwell sequence. That will probably work. I will try it and report back.

I scrubbed the time line slider forward to frame number 27 and the maya preview window showed frame 27 in the image sequence. I then rendered a single frame. This opened mxcl but rendered the first frame of the image sequence, not frame 27. Interesting that the correct animated camera position renders correctly, frame 27.

I tried both a maya lambert and a maxwell material, both with the image sequence applied - with the same results for both.

What do you mean by a built-in node? Is this just a maxwell material?

Thanks for your help.

[Mihnea Balta]

If I scrub forward in my test scene and render, I see the correct texture frame in the output. You're using the image sequence feature of the default file node, not some other node, right?

Do you get this problem with a smaller set-up, like a plane with a simple material? Could I have a simplified version of your scene and a couple of texture frames, to try to debug it?

PS: by built-in node I meant a material which comes with Maya, like lambert, phong etc.

[mitchrichie]

As I was preparing my scene to send to you I got it to work. I had been using the "movie" option when applying my image sequence to the color channel of the lambert material. I tried creating a new lambert, and this time used the "file" option instead of the "movie" option. Both of these options have a "Use image sequence" check box.

This new lambert worked correctly, but curiously, after I applied this new lambert to a separate object, the old image sequence on the old lambert worked as well.

You can see the results in this image:



The foreground counter is the new lambert, the background ones are the old lambert, and both work after using "file" on the new lambert.

At any-rate, it seems to work now. Thanks for your help.

[Mihnea Balta]

The movie node isn't supposed to work at all. :) The only texture node explicitly supported in the plug-in code is "file"; it just happens that the functions used to manipulate that work on the movie node too under some circumstances. However, as you've already noticed, sometimes they don't work, so you should stick with "file".