[chaad]

impossible to make animation in 3dsmax9 ? when i render i have 1 window of maxwell by frame ?! for 100 frames i have 100 windows - not suported by the computer memory...do you have issue ?

[michaelplogue]

Animation (to include multi-mxs frame export) has been disabled with the current plugin.

[juan]

...and will be reenabled next week

Juan

[Boris Ulzibat]

...and will be reenabled next week

Juan

Please! Tell us more!!

[Maximus3D]

Hehe, that sounds pretty promising Juan so next week eh.. damn i can't wait. Well meanwhile Merry Christmas to you all!

/ Max

[chaad]

joyeux noel !
Merry Christmas

[ludi]

Merry Christmas
to all maxwellians & especially for the NL dev team

[andrebaros]

Is it next week yet. I didn't see the list of features removed with the plug-in and jumped right into the new plug-in (A HUGE improvement) only to find that animation is gone... and the computers I have access to over the holidays will sit idle, too bad. Where are the release notes so that I don't miss that again?

[Maxer]

Juan, will animation and cooperative rendering be enabled soon in the new plugins? I can't upgrade until these features work.

[ludi]

They do already IMO

Juan, will animation and cooperative rendering be enabled soon in the new plugins? I can't upgrade until these features work.

[ludi]

Hi Maxer
I'm not shure if my workflow is the right one.
But here is a short tutorial:

Set up your animation in max

Export the animated scene through "File"

Check the animation flag

Open Maxwell Render: File and select the first mxs file



Set the Frames you like to render. eg. 1;9-50;60-80

[juan]

Juan, will animation and cooperative rendering be enabled soon in the new plugins? I can't upgrade until these features work.

- Animation is already enabled in the new Max plugin.
- Cooperative rendering has nothing to do with the plugin, you can work with the 1.1 network system until 1.2 is finished.

Regards,

Juan

[Maxer]

Great I've read so many threads it's hard to remember if the animation feature is working or not.

[Bogdan Coroi]

Hi.

Since there seems to be a little confusion related to the way animation is handled by the new plug-in, I'll try to make a quick overview of the methods.

Animation with the new plug-in can be achieved in 3 ways.
1. By exporting all frames through File->Export/Export Selected and selecting a base name for the scene.
2a. Using "Use Maxwell sequence rendering" Maxwell Renderer option. (General Settings rollup)
2b. Not using "Use Maxwell sequence rendering" Maxwell Renderer option. (General Settings rollup)

Now, I'll try to detail a little the above 3 methods.

1. Export through File->Export method:
- this method refers only to exporting a sequence of .mxs files. That means, you'll have to setup mxcl yourself using the exported output files.
- animation will only work if the current renderer is Maxwell Renderer. If there is another renderer set, you'll get a warning message and only the current frame will be exported.
- current Maxwell Renderer settings will be used, but user specified frames option is not supported using this method.

2a. Using "Use Maxwell sequence rendering" option.
(- for those of you who worked with the old plug-in, rendering using this option will handle animation the old plug-in's way, so you can skip the rest of the details.)
- this method will export all frames starting with the base file name (see bellow), and will start mxcl in a sequence rendering mode.
- you'll have to set the base name for the .mxs sequence. (Eg. "C:\animation_test\scene.mxs. Base name refers to a file name on which the export/renderer will append sequence numbers. (eg. Base file: scene.mx, generated sequence: scene0001.mxs, scene0002.mxs etc))
- you can specify some optional settings like: base MXI output name (General Settings rollup) or base Image output (Common Tab/Render Output group). Both settings will use the same sequence numbers as the corresponding .mxs file.
Advantages:
- 3D Studio Max is not blocked until the mxcl finishes its rendering job.
Disadvantages:
- for a high number of .mxs files in which you're only interested in the output result, you'll need a lot of hdd space to store all .mxs files.
- there is no result output sent back to 3D Studio Max (no image result brought back to Max's frame buffer, no Renderer Image Output potential explored)

2b. Not using "Use Maxwell sequence rendering" option.
- this method exports each frame in a temporary directory, renders the frame by starting mxcl, bring back the result in 3D Studio Max and deletes the temporary .mxs file.
- you can specify some optional settings like: base MXI output name (General Settings rollup) or base Image output (Common Tab/Render Output group). Both settings will use the same sequence numbers as the corresponding .mxs file.
Advantages:
- usefull if you're not interested in the .mxs files but only on the output image result, or, you don't have a lot of hdd space to store all unwanted .mxs files.
- the renderer output image potential can be used since the rendering result is brought back to 3D Studio Max (eg. You can setup the image output as an AVI format, and at the end of the rendering you'll get your AVI file made up by all the exported frames)
Disadvantages:
- 3D Studio Max will be blocked until all the frames are rendered.

Basically, those 2 methods do exactly what Export through File->Export method does, but they will start and setup mxcl for you.

I will update the above mentioned in case I forgot something.
Hope this helps.

Regards,
Bogdan