Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hi,

when animating from rhino plugin, i get incremental file names as follows:
file name_1000._1000.mxs
file name_1001._1001.mxs
...

but mxcl asks for:
file name_1000.1000.mxs
file name_1000.1001.mxs
...

so it stops rendering after the first mxs file.
where can i set this right? it was working fine for a few files.

TIA,
raja

I'm not sure how you're getting filenames that look like that. Could you describe what it is that you're doing - are you using Bongo, or AnimationTools, or?

Thanks...

Hi JD,

I'm using standard rhino animation (SetTurnTableAnimation and record animation).
After rhino exports all frames as mxs, maxwell asks "render exported frames now?"
when you click yes, it renders first frame, and cannot find next.

regards,
raja

I was going to say that I don't understand how you're getting it to do that, but then I figured it out - seems I was using the V5 WIP when I tweaked this routine, because Rhino is generating different filenames in V4 and V5. I'll try to see if I can find a workaround for you.

On further inspection, it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to do anything about this without recompiling the plugin. What appears to be happening is that Rhino is producing filenames with two dots between the file name and extension, i.e. if you set up an animation to use the output name 'test', in V4, you'll get a bunch of frames like this:

test_0001..jpg
test_0002..jpg
test_0003..jpg

That's what's messing up the plugin, and it looks like V5 does not have this happening. Can you confirm that this is what you see there, just by using Rhino Render to export an animation rather than Maxwell?

yep, using rhino render, i get these file names:
test000..jpg
test001..jpg
...

recompiling sounds too much for this, one can ofcourse change file names or use command line.

regards,
raja

Thanks for confirming - I'm going to see if McNeel can fix this for SR6. Would you mind letting me know whether you're using SR5 or SR5b right now? I can't install SR5b to check if it's fixed or not because I want to continue building the plugin against SR5.

am using SR5b.

Thanks much, I made a post over on the rhino ng about getting this fixed for SR6, so we'll see what they say.

Pascal says that this 'double-dot' issue is no longer happening in the V4 SR6 build he tested with.

got it.
thanks.

regards,
raja

If not too late, use this script. Just change the frame number 36 by the number of frame that you want to render.
I forgot who wrote this script for bongo animation, but it's very usefull and with little bit of modification can work well with the basic rhino animation tools.

! _-Runscript (
Rhino.Command("_Maxwell_BeginAnimation")
For Frame = 0 To 34
Rhino.Command "_ViewNextFrame Frame"
Rhino.Command("_Maxwell_Render")
Rhino.Command("_ClearUndo")
Next
Rhino.Command("_Maxwell_EndAnimation")
)

Thanks hyltom, that (which I should have thought of ) is a good way to work around this SR5/b AnimationTools issue. I just wanted to make sure though - are you aware that the current plugin supports Bongo with no need for any scripting?

aha!
thanks hyltom, i'll give this a try.
its not late, I'm trying to be animation-ready for the next assignment.

regards,
raja

hyltom wrote:If not too late, use this script. Just change the frame number 36 by the number of frame that you want to render.
I forgot who wrote this script for bongo animation, but it's very usefull and with little bit of modification can work well with the basic rhino animation tools.

! _-Runscript (
Rhino.Command("_Maxwell_BeginAnimation")
For Frame = 0 To 34
Rhino.Command "_ViewNextFrame Frame"
Rhino.Command("_Maxwell_Render")
Rhino.Command("_ClearUndo")
Next
Rhino.Command("_Maxwell_EndAnimation")
)

the script works fine.

regards,
raja