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Hi everyone,
i've been having animation problems with maya+maxwell since i can remember and now that 1.0 is out i'm finally wondering why.

For a start the batch file which is created on "Batch Render" doesn't respect "Program Files" as a file path and truncates it to "Program" therefore never finding mxcl.exe unless i install it manually to C:\Maxwell (for example)

Second is the batch export script doesn't seem to completely support the "By Frame" setting in render globals; ie, i have 1-199 rendering on 10's - the .mxs files export properly but the batch looks for frame 2 not frame 10

Third is that i've never been able to export a sequence for rendering which has a character/bone rig in it - maya always fails with an error. When i Duplicate the character's mesh to create a 'snapshot' or standalone, non-animated mesh and remove the animated character then maya doesn't have the output error.

Fourth is the expression linking the maxwell camera and it's target gets buggy in the following setup: a nurbs circle with the camera node attached as an animation path constraint (without Follow enabled) and the camera target sitting at 0,0,0 Origin. This creates a turntable and the buggy lookat constraint/expression starts when i move through the animation or click to seek to a frame the camera looks somewhere else and i have to click to the very next frame for the camera to look back at the target. I understand maya's expressions are only evaluated at each frame so that explains the trouble with the camera.

I'd love to hear from others who are having animation problems, and not just animated camera fly-throughs but characters with slightly complex rigs.

Thanks!
matt hermans.

ok
well.. maybe i can help a bit...

Here is an animation that I have BOTH a Fully riged Character Walking AND a Constrained camera--RENDERED with BETA.. and DIDNT have ANY ROBLEMS..720x540 Original rez @ 24fps.. to 12 samples. in 11min Per frame! (dual xeaon 3.2)- shaws an accident we did where the van was speeding throuhg an toll booth and was going 47mph NOt the posted 25mph.. so the Pedestrian crossing was struck by the van right before he finsihed crossing.. you can see in the Split screen the time difference the pedestrian would have had if the van was going the 25mph.. (sorry wmv quicktimes were are full rez and bigger file sizes)--you'll see the fully riged man coming closer as the movies are from the driver POV...

The speeding van:
http://lukeroman3d.cbeckleydesign.net/M ... r47mph.wmv
The correct speed:
http://lukeroman3d.cbeckleydesign.net/M ... o25mph.wmv
The splitscreen:
http://lukeroman3d.cbeckleydesign.net/M ... n25v47.wmv
The view of the pedestrian (not rendered)
http://lukeroman3d.cbeckleydesign.net/M ... eSplit.wmv

HERE are my suggestions..--(you may know how to do alot of this.. I'm gonan be very step by step clear.. just in cae your not too familiar with windows cmd prompt or making maxwell bat files..let me know if im not clear enough)


1) cant help ya with the path thing.. thats just weird.. spaces shouldnt matter.. what os windows xp? very weird..OHOH... MAYBE ITS a SYSTEMS variable thing.. the path in systems variables isnt set right..make sure all of your system variables are correct..(mayapluginpath.. and maxwellroot.. yada yada..) here is a link to a thread covering this.. http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... +variables


2)I think i can help.
.goto where your .mxs files are..(Default-mayaproject/renderscenes) and CREATE a BATCH file.. ".bat" file to launch your rendered frames.. to make a batch file right click inthat folder>NewTextdocument(or just use notepad)
and write out your mxcl comands.. put whatever flags you need but make sure you include the "-a:#-#" flag.. heres an example:

mxcl.exe -mxs:yourfile.mxs -a:1-200

(launches mxcl.. loading youfile.mxs animation 1to200)

alternativly you can add more flags...(to change what you had set in maya)

mxcl.exe -mxs:yourfile.mxs -a:1-200 -o:test.jpg -s:11

(launches mxcl.. loading youfile.mxs animation 1to200 outputfile to test.jpg render to sample level 11)(DON'T worry about the NUMBERS in youfile.mxs or the output.. It will add them automatically.. so it will write your files test001.jpg , etc)

OK save that file as a .bat extension.. in notepad.. File>SAVEAS> **MAKE SURE TO CHANGE SAVE AS TYPE to ALL FILES.. not default .txt...

I name my batch file go.bat

OK now you wanan launch it.. you could just click on that file but it will close after its done.. so... I like to run it from a prompt(cmdShell). .so i can see any errors etc.. .. to run a windows prompt.. goto START MENU>RUN:
in the OPEN field type: cmd (you can also press WINDOWS KEYon KEYBOARD and letter "R" to open up the run window)
Now navigate in the shell to your directory.. using "cd.." to "backup in folders.. and typiing "cd directory" (cd-spacebar-directory) to navigate where your bat file and mxs files are...
(ALTERNATIVLY-there is ALSO a very USEFUL WINDOWS "POWER TOY" available from microsoft that lets you Right click on whatever folder in windows and it will open a prompt DIRECTLY to that folder.. VERY USEFULL... heres a link to the exe... called "Open comand window here"
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... ySetup.exe
save that install it.. and now you can right click any folder in windows and it take you Straight to it...
Check out all the "windows POWER toys"... http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/down ... rtoys.mspx

OK>.. NOW simply run you go.bat... AND EVEN though you have a mxs for EVERY 10th frame.. IT will look BUT continue skipping frames till it finds the NEXT frame.. so it will say it cant find 2-9 BUT at 10 it will render it...

WHY DOES THIS WORK...and MAYA's BATCH OUTPUT NOT WORK??
well.. when you BATCH RENDER out of maya.. IT DOES NOT creat a -a FLAG!!.. INSTEAD.. It creates a Batch file that LISTS each frame as its OWN cmd... so it reads like so.....
mxcl.exe -mxs:file001.mxs -(any other tags)
mxcl.exe -mxs:file002.mxs
mxcl.exe -mxs:file003.mxs
and so on...

So it looks in maya and sees you wanna go from 1-200 BUT instead of just writing ONE comand line with -a:1-200 TAG it writes out each frame INDIVIDUALLY IGNORING the fact that you wana skip every 10th frame..
the -a:1-200 tag will tell maxwell to look for ANY mxs from 1-200 and even though it WONT find frame 2 DONT stop trying till it looks for all 200!

Alright.. I hope I was clear..
let me know if you need more hlep with batch files.. or mxcl render tags..
TRUST me making specific batch files for each render job is awsome cuz you can change so many options and so on..

alternatly.. the -a tag can be used like this:
-a:2;5;9;;15;30-100

this tells it so render frame 2 then 5 then 9 then 15 then 30to100

so you can go in and rerender Specific Frames w/o rendering any others in between even if there are others..

3) Ive exported riged characters in beta file 90% of the time.. havnt tried with v1.. the only thing I can RECOMEND is that if you get this error with bones and such.. SELECT you SKINNED geometry and BAKE the animation FRAME BY FRAME (in maya-EDIT>KEYS>BAKESIMULATION -can do option box to specify time start/end.. and SAMPLE BY 1.(for every frame)-also can check ON disable Implicit control..(check you maya docs for further info on this)..... Then DELETE the rig and submit the render.. save a scene with the rig so you can change the motion.. but this way your vertices are BAKED globaly when the mxs are exported and dont rely on the bones for xyz position.. KIND of a Pain.. BUt I be t this will fit it so you can export animation...

***NOTE*** In the animatins that I provided.. I DID NOT hae to bake the skinned character on that project..BUT OTHERSI DID.. maybe it was becasue other skinned characters had Curves for controls or whatever.. something about the rigs maxwell dont know how to handle ... soo it errors out.. SAFE thing is to render maxwell scenes with ONLY POLYGONS in them NO NURBS anywhere in the scene to be safe.. -bones seem to be ok.. like in the animation above.. BUT IF I were you ID bake your aniamtion and ONLY export a scene with ONLY POLYGONS in it.. ALSO DELETE YOU HISTORY and SUCH.. YOU dont want ANY info exept baked poly animation...


4) again.. same as ABOVE.. this defiantly happend to me a few time in beta expoting.. When i had the camera constrained or driven by expression/dynamics... SAME fix... SELECT you camera.. and BAKE ITS ANIMATION FRAME BY FRAME(in maya-EDIT>KEYS>BAKESIMULATION -can do option box to specify time start/end.. and SAMPLE BY 1.(for every frame)-also can check ON disable Implicit control..(check you maya docs for further info on this)...now on exprot the camera will be keyframed EACH frame..and not relying on anything for its position..



also if BAKING the animations and camera dont work.. and Making sure everything exept polygon geometry is gone.. then I would think its some kind of geo error with your scene.. i'll think about other solutions....

BUT please let me know if these suggestions did or DIDNT work for ya..


Cant wait to see some renders from ya..

-Luke Roman


PS-- also Search the forum..SEARCh ALOT.. there is TONS of goodness in all these threads.. try to read all the maya threads.. just skim over then if ya have time one night.. and check any threads for Extras on making your own Bat file... I think there is stuffin the tutorials sections too....

Hi Luke,
Thanks a lot for your reply. I'm familiar with batch scripting, so i'll happily look into using it more with maxwell; especially because it can autodetect .mxs files and render them!

We use Point Oven (www.ef9.com) for baking our animations usually, so i'll give that a go.

I'd still love for the batch render function from Maya to work properly though, that would make things easier i'm sure.

Nice renders by the way!

Thanks again,
Matt.

Two problems i'm having now that i'm using the batch render method is that the MXI file doesn't get incremented like the image output does. Is that by design?
Second is if i use the flag -a:1-199 it doesn't skip non-existing .mxs scenes/frames but chucks an error and halts. It'd be perfect if it continued to look for frames (for the case of rendering on nth frame-basis)


thanks,
Matt.

renbry wrote:Two problems i'm having now that i'm using the batch render method is that the MXI file doesn't get incremented like the image output does. Is that by design?
Second is if i use the flag -a:1-199 it doesn't skip non-existing .mxs scenes/frames but chucks an error and halts. It'd be perfect if it continued to look for frames (for the case of rendering on nth frame-basis)


thanks,
Matt.

YA,, the mxi output alwasy seems to just write 1 mxi file instead of sequantial mxi's !! What a Pain.. This is something i was gonna request was fixed/aded to upcoming releases.. the only way to get around that is to do a bathc file that calles each mxs as a seperate comand and adjust the numbervalue in each mxi creation tag..

kinda like
mxcl.exe -mxs:file001.mxs -mxi:mxifile001.mxi
mxcl.exe -mxs:file010.mxs -mxi:mxifile010.mxi.. etc (maybe need to put -mix:file001.mxi,r - - althought i read that resume is not quite workin right in v1 yet.. on the tofix list)



the animation problem..thats peculiar.. cuz The Beta.. Definatly would skip non existant frames to find the next frame....

My whole basis on the response was from using Beta animations so I have to give this all a go in V1 now.. sucks to hear that

its a pain in the ars but you could just write your batch with ","
ie: -a:1,10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100...etc (sorry before i used ; i think it needs commas ,)

not bad for 1-200 but defiantly could get very annoying..

Yo.. a weird alternate.. would be to change you fps in maya.. to 10 fps? instead of 30 or 24.. would that work.. so you convert your 30fps animation to 10fps... only as a seprate render scene.. this is too very annoying.. but may work for you..so we should see if we can get the -a tag behaviour updated in the next v1 update..

-- i'll try to do some animation in v1 this weekend so i'll be able better to understand any changes to v1 vs beta..


-luke