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We want to network render a sequence of frames (simple fly-thru animation in a 3ds max scene) on a network which does not have 3ds max installed and which is in a geographically different location.
So my questions is can we export an animated camera in an mxs file, then open the mxs file in MX studio and export the sequence of frames from here?

The alternative seems to be to export the complete sequence of mxs files for each frame (about 1500frames of about 250MB each !!), then copy the 300GB to an external usb drive, ...then hop in the car, drive to the other office, ...copy over the files (which will take about 3hrs each time), before finally running an "animation" network render job using Maxwell manager/monitor/render node setup on the remote network.

Yet another alternative is to install 3dsmax and our various 3rd party plug-ins on the remote network also and then export the mxs sequence from the original 3ds max file -thus eliminating the need to copy 300gb on and off the external usb drive

Please tell me there is a way MX studio can generate all the mxs files , ie that it can contain information about the animated camera? Unfortunately my own tests and searches of the forum are making me think that mxs files can only contain geometry and information about a single scene with no timeline information !?

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated!
Thanks
Jesper Pedersen

The alternative seems to be to export the complete sequence of mxs files for each frame

This is the way to do it, sorry. MW Studio does not handle any animation functions.

However you sound like a candidate for MXS References. So each frame need not be 250mb after all.

Look into Referenced MXS files
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/ma ... +MXS+files

While it's true that each MXS represents one frame, if only the camera is moving you can simply have a scene with only the camera in it that moves, export an MXS of each of frame, now each MXS is maybe a few kb in size because only the camera is in it. Before doing this though, import your main scene as a MXS reference (you can first export it from 3dsMax from File>Export, there is an MXS option). Now when exporting the camera move, each of those tiny MXS will reference that huge MXS scene.

The referenced MXS will appear as a point cloud in the 3dsMax viewport, so you can position it as you want to fit the camera movement. Please ask in the 3dsMax forum for details on working with referenced MXS files.

Mihai / Hatts,

Ok, that sound like it would help, and I think I can live without the animated birds we were going to put in the sequence!
I'll have a read up on it but it could ceratinly speed things up.

Also, would it speed things up to copy the shared large MXS file to a local drive of each of the render nodes (so they could all find it in C:\temp\mxs files\ "projectname".mxs) , we only use 3 render nodes and the mxs files are often up to 500mb in size !? Maybe that is something we'll have to test here, but it sounds like it would help the overall render times also.

Thanks for the tip!

Network will copy it automatically if you have "Send dependencies" checked so no need to do this manually. It will also work more efficiently this way instead of manually copying especially if you have many nodes because it works like a peer-to-peer network - A sends to B, as soon as it finishes, A sends to C but now also B can send to D etc. So you are not copying from one location to 10 different ones at the same time which can be much slower than the peer-to-peer approach.


Btw:

Ok, that sound like it would help, and I think I can live without the animated birds we were going to put in the sequence!

Of course you could just copy this geometry into the MXS which has the camera movement. I doubt it will create 100MB MXS worth of birds?

Mihai,

Regarding your tip about the birds ....either you're a genius or I've been working way too many hours on this project

Thanks!!

Over the years I've learned to tone down my wishful thinking, so I'd go with option nr 2