[JamesColeman]

Hi everyone (and especially JD), I recently exported an animation from C4D. I was using a Stage object to have multiple cameras in my scene (it makes controlling them easier for me). It looks like the Stage object wasn't recognised by the Maxwell plugin, because it stayed on the first camera for the entire animation without changing to the next camera. It's not a huge problem because I can manually change camera and export the required frames, but it would be useful to let it chug overnight in one fell swoop.

Is the Stage object meant to be included? I had a little search but couldn't find anything.

Thanks

James

[JDHill]

I don't anything special to enable or prevent it working, so I'll take a look and see what I can find.

[JamesColeman]

I just animate the active camera, it works in C4D, but it didn't change in the render. Maxwell V2.7.2 C4D R13.061 Plugin 2.7.22 OSX 10.6.8

[JamesColeman]

Also maybe worth noting that when I was exporting the animation frames, the correct camera had to be active. In other words I had to have my timeline marker previewing the section of the animation with the correct camera selected. Otherwise it would use whatever camera was active. (Sorry if that sounds like I'm just re-wording my first post but I just wanted to add more detail).

[Rogurt]

+1 here. Has there been a solution found to that?

[JDHill]

As far as I can tell, as it regards cameras in Cinema, and the Stage Object, there are two factors in play:

1. There is apparently a limitation in Maxwell, whereby you cannot switch cameras in the middle of rendering a frame sequence. The MXS files may contain multiple cameras, and may have different cameras set as active (as confirmed by opening them in Studio), but it is only the camera that is active when you start rendering the frame sequence, which will be rendered throughout.
2. When you set different cameras current using the Stage Object, they lag behind by a frame during export. So, setting up 3 cameras, using the Stage object to make a different one of them active in Cinema on frames [0, 1, 2], and then exporting frames 1-3, you'll end up with 3 MXS files, using cameras 0, 1, and 2, respectively. If you export frames 0-2, frames 0 & 1 will both use the first camera, and frame 2 will use the second.

A way around the first problem would be to drive Maxwell with a batch file, rather than asking it to automatically render a frame sequence (i.e. using Render Options > Scene > Frames, as is done when you render an animation directly from the plugin).