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In my attempt to make some movie with Maxwell, i have tried this morning to set up a turntable animation, here the result:
DivShare File - anim-Desktop.m4v...it's the new Apple advertisement, just miss the music

Sorry to make you waste your time (for the people who have watched it) ...anyway, i want to complain a little bit about the lack of information and tutorial to setup this kind of project. I have spend around 2 hours to try to figure out how to make all this work. I have read the thread about Bongo working with Maxwell, i have read the help file from JD but couldn't find a clear and explicit step by step. But finally i made it work. So take care Pixar and Dreamworks, hyltom mega production is coming

So for people who want to make some animation:
1.download and install "Maxwell Script 1.6.0 (x86)"....i had no idea i had to do this.
2.create a new button with the following script link to it : where i=frames you want to render.
part of this code is given by JD but why not give the complete version usable directly from a button in rhino??? not everyone know how to use a script in rhino.
3.setup the Bongo animation (keyframe)
4.setup the Maxwell scene
5.When you think everything is ready, just click the button you have created on step 2 but don't forget to change the keyframe number.

It's a short help but if i knew the step 1 and 2, I could have setup this animation in 10 minutes.

Finally I have some question. Is it possible to export only the mxs of an animation? if yes how to do it? Then how to batch render those mxs in differents computers? Is there a function in maxwell to do that?

Hi Hyltom,

It's a short help but if i knew the step 1 and 2, I could have setup this animation in 10 minutes.

You do not need to install Maxwell.Script to do this animation, since all you are using is RhinoScript. There is a full description of the Maxwell.Script library in the plugin's help and there is also an example of using Maxwell through RhinoScript to create a sun animation. About a button for making a Bongo animation, it just did not occur to me to do that - I don't have Bongo, so I cannot test whether any scripts which call it would work.

Finally I have some question. Is it possible to export only the mxs of an animation? if yes how to do it? Then how to batch render those mxs in differents computers? Is there a function in maxwell to do that?

Sorry, but I'm not sure what you meant by 'mxs of an animation' - there is always one mxs per frame when you do animation. Doing the actual rendering of animations in MXCL works is by using the -a: flag in the command line when you start MXCL. So if you had 100 mxs files which contained the frames of an animation and you just wanted to render the first fifty, you would render them something like this:

mxcl -mxs:mxs_name.mxs -d -a:1-50

You could render the other fifty on another machine in a similar way. That's why in the plugin, you can't re-render an animation; the plugin needs to get the 'BeginAnimation' command to know which frame is 0, then it starts counting every time you write an mxs, then it builds a command-line as shown above when you give EndAnimation, which starts MXCL rendering the frames you created.

Let me know if this helps to answer your question at all.

Cheers,

JD

You do not need to install Maxwell.Script to do this animation

If you say so, I told you i have no idea how to make the animation works .
I have seen the sun animation done with the script, impressive, but i don't understand any line of this code and how to make it works ...until this morning. Now i think i know how to launch it .
About the button, i don't blame you to not have included this button (it's not really related to maxwell), i just found that in the help file it could be explain a little bit better how to use the script. So the button is one way.
As you haven't tried this script, i can tell you that it works really well. i was even surprise that it can be so easy to calculate a full animation.

My first question was: is it possible to only export all the mxs of an animation (each frame has a mxs related).
Thanks for the command line -a: it's exactly what i was looking for. I take note to not forget that one.

If i follow well the end of your message, that answer my first question. Means if i just want to export the mxs of each frame, i just need to use this script is it? Thank you very much for your help and clarification Jeremy, i really appreciate.

Yes, that's basically it, except it will leave the plugin stuck in the 'animation loop' (where it is counting frames). So, you would probably do this:
The switch to Maxwell_CancelAnimation at the end will tell the plugin you don't want to write any more mxs files in the sequence - if you don't cancel it, you will write another frame next time you render or export an mxs.

Great, thank you Jeremy!

Is Bongo required to make this animation work?

jvm

Not at all. Try this:

1. place your camera in the starting position

2. use the SetTurnTableAnimation command to set up the animation:

• a. in the command-line, type SetTurnTableAnimation and click Enter
  b. set the number of frames to export
  c. choose clockwise or counterclockwise
  d. skip the file-type selection, it is not used by the plugin
  e. select RenderFull for capture method
  f. select the desired viewport (this will probably already be correct)
  g. select a name for the animation

3. use the RecordAnimation command to render:

• a. type RecordAnimation, click Enter
  b. select any folder in the dialog which appears - it is not used by the plugin
  c. click OK

The turntable animation will now be rendered in MXCL.

Ooooohhhhh! I will try.

Thanks JD.

jvm

JD-

Are the command line instructions like the one posted from an earlier reply to this thread "mxcl -mxs:mxs_name.mxs -d -a:1-50" placed in a dialog box within the plugin?

What if I wanted to render the animation on a separate machine and not from the plug-in?

Thanks for your help.

jvm

You can inspect the actual command line which was given to MXCL by opening up the plugin's Log Viewer. To re-render the generated MXS files on another machine, you can:

1. start MXCL from a command line passing the -a:1-x flag which tells it to render in animation mode

- or -

2. open MXCL in gui mode, File > Open MXS > open the first frame, then in the Render Options tab, enter the frames (i.e. 1-x) to render in the Animation > Frames section

JD-

Thanks so much for your timely response...

jvm