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Thread: Help with my animation!

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    Default Help with my animation!

    Hello - I have posted the beginning few frames of an animation I have been working on (zip file). We are an agricultural engineering firm working with Revit, and I have been learning 3DS Max to be able to show off some of our work. I have been having display issues with my animation - when it is zoomed out (exterior shots from a distance) the materials (steel towers and mechanical equipment especially) have a "flickering" look that I hope is visible in the short segment I've posted. It may be doing this because of how many faces there are on the towers, but it looks great when I am closer to the model. I am wondering what settings I may be able to tweak to make it look better, or at least take away the flickering. Thanks for any help.

    starr
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    Default Re: Help with my animation!

    Starr,

    How are you producing this animation? It look a very much like a "Preview" rather than a rendered animation. If you are using the scanline or mental ray renderer, it would most likely be your anti-alias setting. Let me know on the fomer before I get into explaing the latter.

    Glen

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    Default Re: Help with my animation!

    Glen - thanks for the help. Boy, am I a newbie! You guessed right - I was rendering with "Preview". I am now experimenting with different settings to try to get it better with a rendered animation. I am still not sure what the best way is to tweak the anti-aliasing settings. I wish there was better documentation with this (or any AutoDesk) software. The help files are next to useless for most of what a beginner needs to do - like most, they are good for learning it command-by-command, but that's only helpful if you know what path you need to go down for a certain outcome. I miss the days when these programs came with printed documentation. I have been learning 3DS thru lynda.com, but they also directed me to animate the scene the "Preview" way I first did it.

    starr

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    Default Re: Help with my animation!

    The "preview' looks good! and it is great that you are using different settings but just be care as it can harm your work

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    Default Re: Help with my animation!

    Previews are great for getting the general idea of your camera movements and such, but definitely use Render for any final animations. With those, I recommend rendering out a sequence of frames versus an AVI. The difference is that if the render crashes (which happens) you'll only loose the frames after the crash. With an AVI, everything is lost.

    Mental Ray may be a good option, especially for exterior scenes. The only caution is Revit models tend to have overapping faces, which can cause some weird effects. It doesn't take long to set up and render a single frame to check. Keep the questions coming!

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    Default Re: Help with my animation!

    Glen - thanks again for the help. I am now (per your recommendation) experimenting with "rendering out a sequence of frames versus an AVI". I see now that this is definitely the way to go for several reasons. I produced a test segment of (100) high-res .png image files, but I have not been able to successfully tie them together into an .avi file. I do not have any additional "post-production" programs to do this like Adobe Premier, so I am limited to the methods inside 3ds Max. It seems like my best options with this are the following methods, where I list my problems/issues:

    I first built an "IFL" file that lists the 100 images. Then I tried to render this two different ways:

    1. Use 3ds Max's RAM player. I can successfully load the string of image files (with the IFL file), but when I try to save it to an .avi file, it hangs up and I get a sequence of "Internal Error" messages. I am running Windows 7 64-bit, and did read that 64-bit can be a problem with this.

    2. Render the frames. Here are the steps for this given by the "Help" files:

    To render the frames in an IFL file as a movie (AVI or MOV format):

    1.Choose Rendering Environment.
    2.On the Environment dialog, click Environment Map.
    3.On the Material/Map Browser, choose Bitmap, and then click OK.
    4.On the Select Bitmap Image File dialog, choose the IFL file, and then click OK.
    5.Click (Time Configuration), and use the Time Configuration dialog to make the animation length match the number of frames specified in the IFL file.
    6.Render a viewport to a movie-format file.

    I did steps 1 thru 5 above, no problem, but when I get to 6 (Render a viewport), I must be missing something. At that point it begins the rendering, but it seems to be rendering it the standard way, where it takes several minutes for each frame. I don't think it is using the image files to render it; I have read elsewhere that at this point it should only take a few seconds to "render" the image files, and be complete fairly soon. Where do I tell it to render the images? What am I missing here? Thanks for any help!

    starr

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    Default Re: Help with my animation!

    No worries! It's a process that takes some getting used to. The next one will be much easier.

    Okay, the first thing that caught my attention is when you mentioned "high-res .png image files." How large (pixel dimensions) are you rendering your images? One of the first things we ask our clients is how they are going to display their animation content. (Web, PowerPoint, DVD, etc.). From there we go with the largest demoninator since the animation can be reduced in resolution without too much degredation (always best to go with the native size). The largest we ever render out a sequence through Max is 1920x1080. Typically 1280x720 is more than adequate for our needs.

    RAM player is awesome and easy to get animations out, but it does use your onboard hardware to process the files. Too many files or too large of files will bring your system to its knees. I think that is part of the problem you are running in to at the moment. I'm not certain why they have you create an ILF. Those are typically used for animated materials/environments. Once the sequence is loaded into RAM player you can just save it out as an AVI/MOV by clickig on thelittle diskette icon and choosing the export format. It certainly will not re-render anything.

    A couple other suggestions:

    1) Reduce the image size of the sequenced frames
    2) Use another compositor (I recomend a freeware called VirtualDub. It's pretty slick and easier on the hardware. Oh! ...and it's free)

    Keep us posted!

    Glen
    Last edited by loydg; 2013-01-03 at 01:44 PM.

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