- Sat Jan 19, 2008 10:45 pm
#258953
Hi sfawehinmi,
As the others indicated, the answer is currently 'no'. Underneath, it is technically due to the fact that Bongo needs the plugin to have things it doesn't (can't) have, namely, the 'render window' that polynurb referred to. If it simply called 'Render', and continued to the next frame when the current render plugin (i.e. Maxwell) returned 'success' (as AnimationTools does), it would work - but as polynurb points out, 'success' isn't good enough for Bongo - it wants to try to save an image too. Technically, Rhino and Bongo assume that the renderer doesn't write to a file, but directly into a screen buffer, contained in a render window - that window is assumed to have a function which saves the buffer to the specified file. As you know, Maxwell doesn't work this way - MXCL runs in an entirely different process (in Windows, that means it might as well be on another planet), and progressively writes the image to a file directly - specifying a certain file can only be done pre-emptively, before MXCL has been started. There is, in fact, specific code in the plugin which listens for Bongo commands and explicitly prevents the plugin from reacting - if this wasn't done, you would experience a really wonderful thing: a couple hundred mxcl.exe processes in your Task Manager, along with a necessary forced re-boot.
All of this is not to say that it's a closed door...I have talked to McNeel people about it, and hopefully we'll get something worked out soon, whether it comes from my end or theirs. Truthfully though, there is another factor - despite being a McNeel product, Bongo is a 3rd-party application (which I do not own), and as such I have never been able to justify putting it on top-priority (I've sometimes asked myself why the question seems to be 'why doesn't Maxwell support Bongo', when it is really no different to ask the opposite). As such, time devoted to Bongo support is time taken away from improving the plugin for Rhino users who bought Maxwell and expect support for their software. In this way, AnimationTools support was a must, since it is something that every Rhino owner has paid for, and it has been supported as well as possible from the beginning.
There were some changes in SR2 which I hoped would help, but unfortunately, they weren't exactly the right thing. In the long run, I want it to work - it's just a matter of time and coordination to make that happen.
Cheers,
JD
Next Limit Team
- By choo-chee
- By Mark Bell