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I'm looking to do an animation. Pretty simple exterior flyaround, just animating a camera around a circle about the building in 3ds Max. Is there anything in particular I should know or be concerned about?

My biggest concern is noise. If the noise pattern is different in each frame, won't it cause a sort of flickering?

-Brodie

use a fixed cpu id to avoid nosie flicker..

best,
andre

Thanks, how do I do that? I assume that's a command line thing but I'm not sure what to type in.

Also, what's the best method for using a network to render (I have 1 other machine I can render on via network). Is there a tutorial or anything for how to set up 3ds Max to do a maxwell render via network? I'm not really seeing anything in the manuals.

-Brodie

There is a button in the 3dsMax plugin for some time now:

added a button in the render globals panel which exports the scene and submits it to the Maxwell network system

so should be pretty simple sending the scene to render via network from 3dsMax.

I'm trying to run the script found in the manual "17.03.05 Progressive render for Animations"

I keep getting the following error...



I've never used scripts before but I can't find out what the "illegal character" is that's giving me a syntax error. I've tried the following input folders which all result in the same error...

Z:\Jobs\Willits, CA\Working\2011-04-28 Animation\Images\animation test 2
Z:\Jobs\Willits, CA\Working\Animation Input Output\Input
C:\Users\bgeers\Animation Input Output\Input
C:\input

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Also, is there a way to run a script over the network? I like the idea of this script but if I can only use 1 computer I'm not sure if it's the way I should go.

-Brodie

Nevermind, I got the script to work.

I'm still curious if the progressive animation render script can be used over a network though.

edit: Also, can I add a cpuid tag somewhere in that script to keep the id consistent between renders? If so, where would I add it?

-Brodie

You can use batch job in Network to add a bunch of MXS files in a folder, specify a sampling level and start the network render (in coop mode if you want to render the same scene on multiple computers, then merge the result). Then once it's reached that SL, you can resume a coop render and set a new SL.

You shouldn't specify the same cpuid, because coop merging needs a different starting seed for all renders to merge them properly. I don't think the noise will be a problem, it would be more problematic if it was static...seeing noise "stuck" in the animation. In any case I guess you want to render to a level where the noise is almost gone.....

Flickering noise averages out over time in your mind better than fixed noise will.

It's like film grain. You want it to change every frame.

Awesome, I'd wondered if the noise would 'even out' in an animation. Good to hear that's the case. I'll give mihai's suggestion regarding the network rendering a shot. I ran a test animation via the progressive animation script last night and it works great. I may have to test out some more of those scripts. I just wish they could be used on the network. I've had some issues resuming renders in the past (probably something I did wrong) so I like as much automation as I can get.

-Brodie

I was testing your suggestion mihai and I have a question. I ran a batch render of 5 scenes to SL4.

Once those finished I did the same thing but set it to SL8. Via that method it doesn't resume though. So I reread your post and tried doing a "Coop" rendering on one of the files which worked. However, there are going to be something like 1440 files so manually resuming them one by one isn't really an option. Did I miss something from your post?

Also with the batch mode, the scene dependencies are sent out for each scene which is a huge waste of time.

After some further testing and checking the manual I took another look at the Animation mode. Here the dependencies are only sent once. And if I run it again but set the SL higher it also resumes.

So it looks like to mimic the progressive animation script over the network I can send an Animation job to the network at, say, SL5. Then send the same Animation at SL7,9,...etc. Does that sound right?

-Brodie

I think you're over-complicating things, Brodie.

1. Set up your scene in Max to the desired SL and the desired frame numbers.
2. Set save paths (preferably in a new empty folder) for MXI, MXS and image. Under the MXI and MXS save area, there is a checkbox to incrementally number the saved files. Check these.
3. Go to File - Export. Choose MXS as the file type and choose your save folder and name your MXS.
4. Hit Save and a box will come up where you can make sure the right camera is selected. Check the animation box and the "append frame number..." box. Click OK.

Now you have a sequence of MXS files ready to be rendered with the network wizard using the Animation render. Note that you can even use the network wizard if you are only using one computer.

Let me know if you have any questions.

jfrancis wrote:Flickering noise averages out over time in your mind better than fixed noise will.

It's like film grain. You want it to change every frame.

true for shadows but not for glas/metal reflection flicker e.g.

Here's my current hangup. I came in this morning to find out my screen had looked like this (apparently from 1:21am according to the Node). The monitor looks like it's running but it's not changing nor is the render actually rendering as evidenced by the task manager. Note that the screens not frozen, not even the window. I can still go in and edit SL's and do whatever I want in the monitor, it's just not progressing.

I guess I'll restart and begin at frame 611. Loosing 7 hours hurts though.



-Brodie

Too many issues with running the animation over the network. What if I run the progressive animation script on 2 different computers? Would there be a way to merge the MXI's from those two computers at the end - other than merging them by hand one-by-one?

-Brodie

nevermind, i just found the merge mxi sequence option

-brodie