[Edward1986]

Hello,

I am trying to create an animation with Rhino, Bongo and Maxwell.

It is quite simple, just following a path with the camera constrained to 1 object.

I have done the model and set up the animation, there is 100 frames. When I go to render the animation it tries to render all 100 at the same time.

I am just using 1 machine with no other resources so this pretty much crashes the machine-

Is there a way to set it up so it will render one frame at a time? So Maxwell opens, renders to a certain SL, closes and then opens up to render the next frame.

I am sure I have done this before with a turntable animation but can't remember how I did.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Ed

[polynurb]

You have to use the maxwell animation toolbar.
How to use it is explained in the plugin help file, which you can open from within rhino when you click on the maxwell menu item.

[Edward1986]

Hi,

I have read through the help section and can't find anything covering that particular issue. It just gives brief descriptions of what the begin, end and cancel animations commands do.

This is the first time trying this for me so forgive me if I am missing some basics!

Ed

[polynurb]

afaik, you hit the start animation button, then export the frames
This will prevent maxwell.exe to be called after a frame is exported

[JDHill]

It's not necessary to use the Begin/EndAnimation plugin commands with Bongo; I just checked it here, and everything is working fine rendering the normal way (i.e. Bongo > Render Animation > Render). I tested using Bongo 1.0 SR8a (this is the only supported version), on both Rhino 4 & 5 x86.

Regarding Begin/End Animation, what happens is that if you render after running BeginAnimation, the plugin only writes an MXS file, rather than writing it and rendering it. A frame number is stored, and the plugin waits for you to render another frame. When you do, another MXS is written, and the frame number is incremented, and so on. When you finally run EndAnimation, the plugin then starts Maxwell Render, passing it the queued frame numbers.

[Edward1986]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I have been banging my head against the wall all day and still cant get it.

I have the animation set up- I click the render animation with bongo, with maxwell set as the renderer, then click render- and then my pc tries to open up 100 instaces of maxwell at a time and render them all at once- which crashes my computer.

What I am after is a way of doing it so when I click render, it opens maxwell, renders to a set SL, closes maxwell, then opens up again to do the next frame... and so on until all 100 are done.

Am I missing something that is staring me in the face??!

Thanks

Ed

[JDHill]

Which versions of Rhino, Bongo, and Maxwell for Rhino are you using? Do you have any other non-standard plugins installed?

[Edward1986]

Rhino 4.0 (SR9), Bongo 1.0.8.0 (evaluation), and Maxwell 1.8.3.0.

I have a few other plug ins- jewellery specific ones- for placing stones etc... and t-splines.

[JDHill]

That version of the plugin is outdated by nearly four years, but it should theoretically work (my release notes indicate Bongo support was first implemented in version 1.8.2), provided you use Bongo 1.0 SR6 -- judging by the Bongo release notes page, that was the current service release around April 2009, when 1.8.2 was released. I have no idea whether that is still available.

[Edward1986]

Hi,

I have now got it to the point that it renders 1 frame (the first one) then when it attempts to render the second it says 'No active render window to save' It then just renders to 1 frame and stops.... I have tried the same process with Vray and just with the bascic Rhino render and it seems to work fine- rendering 1 image after another, 1 by 1...

Ed

[JDHill]

Really, all bets are off, using the versions of software you are using: neither your version of Rhino nor Bongo existed at the time your plugin was compiled. It may be that rather than having Bongo drive the animation, you can drive both Bongo and Maxwell using a script:

Code: Select all

_NoEcho

_-RunScript (

  firstFrame = 0
  finalFrame = 15
  
  Rhino.Command "_Maxwell_BeginAnimation"

  For f = firstFrame To finalFrame
    Rhino.Command "_BongoSetSliderPosition " & f
    Rhino.Command "_BongoRefresh"
    Rhino.Command "_Maxwell_Render"
    Rhino.Command "_ClearUndo"
  Next

  Rhino.Command "_Maxwell_EndAnimation"

)

Try pasting that into a toolbar button and see if it works.

[Edward1986]

Hi,

I tried this but it only exported the mxi.

Thanks for all your efforts- I probably need an upgrade!!

Thanks

Ed

[JDHill]

I assume you meant to write that it exported the MXS (MXI is the product of the rendering process). If so, and if it wrote several MXS files, you can always render the animation from within Maxwell Render by manually setting the number of frames. You do that by opening the first MXS and entering the frame range you wish to render in the Animation > Frames box in the Render Options tab in mxcl.exe. That is all the plugin does in the EndAnimation command -- it starts mxcl.exe as normal, except that it includes the frame range on the commandline.

[kami]

I found that it is also possible to render the animation via the bongo > render animation ...
then it writes all the .mxs and does not start them. You can start them using the command line with mxcl, a batchscript or the network render

[JDHill]

it writes all the .mxs and does not start them.

Are you using the current release version of Bongo?