Snowflake Tute Rendering Error

# 1 19-12-2010 , 11:19 PM

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I've done the snow tute, I quite liked my result when I hit play within Maya but I can't get it to batch render (can render a single frame)... after seeing Bullets successful render I thought I'd go tackle it again, still no luck though user added image

I'm getting these error messages in my output window
TIFFReadDirectory: Warning, C:/Anim8/Maya/Tutes/simplyMaya/Particle Dynamics Snow/snowflake.3.tif: unknown field with tag 37724 (0x935c) encountered.

Thats just the one line, I get errors about all three tifs scrolling continuously in my output window when I playback within Maya. When I batch render, it says its rendering but then stays on 0% until I cancel the render even though my CPU usage stays up around the 85-90 mark.

What have I done(am I doing) wrong??

Learn from others mistakes, it takes too long to make them all yourself.

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# 2 19-12-2010 , 11:30 PM

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Try using a different file format anything that supports an alpha channel for example .iff instead. there's something not working with .tiff on your pc.

Cheers,
Nilla

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# 3 19-12-2010 , 11:48 PM

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I used the .iff as Nilla suggested mate. I have also learnt to name it properly and put the TOTAL path in the scene name...LOL otherwise you will get the frames all over the place (my first one filled the desktop LOL)...

cheers bullet

oh and I remember David said something about the frame padding and change it to 3....then it will come out like this "snow_tut.003.iff", I dont know if that will help? I do remember vaguely David mentioning some quirks with this....

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Last edited by bullet1968; 19-12-2010 at 11:52 PM.

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# 4 21-12-2010 , 12:18 AM

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Thanks you two,

Changing my sprite images to bmp's did get rid of the scrolling errors.

I wasnt trying to batch a bunch of iffs though, I thought because I wasn't going to composit the snow ontop of/with anything else I could render to avi to get a postable output -quickly- And this is what was failing. After I still couldnt avi my scene with bmp sprites either I rendered to iffs (like david told me to in the tute) and it churned em out... though alot slower than I thought. My emmitter rate is a fair bit higher than Davids in the tute... by the time I was rendering frame 250-300 it was really chugging.

I then rendered to iffs with the original tiff sprites and it (slowly) worked - even with those output errors back???

I have After Effects 5 (not CS5 just 5) just not installed. I'm going to need a good compositing program installed soon but I formatted my PC about a year ago and havent had a need for it yet it seems. I do use an equally old version of Premier (6) for my 2-D stuff so I am about to try churn out something with all those iffs from yesterday in that- Didnt try this yesterday as because it took alot longer to render those single frames than I ever gave my PC to render the AVI I thought I'd give it another chance...

...set it to render and after an hour or so my Son wanted to use my computer as its slightly faster than his- and apparently it makes all the difference in multiplayer ??? And then we went to the beach.

I should ask somewhere else but what Compositing program do you recommend? Will AE 5 be enough or should I REALLY upgrade? In the apache tute and a few others tutes I have watched they use fusion, when I was studying my lecturer always spoke of combustion... I value your opinions.

Learn from others mistakes, it takes too long to make them all yourself.

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# 5 21-12-2010 , 12:33 AM

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Umm never tried to render bits of my scene to Avi. Just rendered a 10 frame avi fine, 100 frame avi fine, 200 fine...

300 frame avi hangs... is there a buffer setting or a memory cache or 'something' that could be causing this?

Learn from others mistakes, it takes too long to make them all yourself.

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# 6 21-12-2010 , 01:48 AM

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I ahvent tried .avi mate...I have avoided it due to the fact if it craps itself (so Im told) you lose the lost...at least with framing you can start where it crashed...I use CS3 AE...havent tried anuthing else yet as they are only tutrs and I wont get into serious animating on my laptop...that will kill it.

As for your son...what a BS excuse LOL thats the same mine uses when he kicks mother off...so I have banned MP games....Mum gets cranky without her facebook LOL. As for other programs I have no idea mate...somebody else might?

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 7 21-12-2010 , 03:15 AM

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I don't do a lot of animation and dynamics so I rarely batch render as I work with stills but I know rendering avi in Maya is a bad idea so stick with iff and tiff. My tech skills were so poor when David first tricked me into learning Maya, for this reason I've struggled more than most people would with technical errors like this and I just wanted to give you some advice here because Maya will throw up a fair few errors and 99 percent of the time I've found that it's me as a user and not the actual program that is to blame. And it's really difficult to say what the problem is when you're new to a 3d app with time you start to recognize patterns and it gets easier to get past these things. So as far as it's possible try not to get too hung up on small issues and if you can't figure it out save your scene and start experimenting with everything that could possibly be throwing up an error. You should never just turn things on all over the place, but it's also important to try and get to know the technical side of the program and the only way to do this is by trial and error. It goes for everything in Maya, instead of changing a slider by 0.1 to figure out what it does crank it up to 100 and you'll get it straight away. Also for rendering errors it's really important to read what it says in your script editor and try to make sense of it, as well in your render view window you have the option to run render diagnostics and this is so helpful so use it, it will tell you what it wrong pretty much every time you get stuck.

For AE or other compositing software I can't really say which ones best as I don't use any but I think it comes down to picking an app and sticking with it, once you have it under control information transfers well between them. For version upgrades someone who used Maya 4.5 well would not have a lot of difficulty getting used to Maya 2011, certain fields change more than others but the application remains the same. The only reason for why you would want to use a specific 3d application as a hobbyist would be because you liked the workflow better in one, and as someone who wanted to work in the industry because certain industries use certain apps more than others. An example here would be archvis which I'm reading a lot about atm where the industry uses mainly max and vray, so if you were going for a job here you'd be better of with max than maya as the studio you would work for would most likely be using max, but someone with maya skills would be able to transfer the same knowledge and have a good grip of max within weeks. As studios use proprietary software anyone who gets a job at a large studio has to learn to use their in house tools as well at which point your software is less relevant. Huge resources go into creating custom apps and hundreds of programmers can be employed to work on this for one specific movie. Next time you see a pixar movie in the end credits look at the list of names for 3d artists and then the list for programmers user added image

So my tip would be to stick with AE if this is what you have, this is also what we'll produce training for as David uses it. We might do nuke and shake as well as this is what our animator works in, the thing with these guys who's worked in the industry for many years is that it's not rare that they have an arsenal of 10-15 apps and it's not because they sat down and decided to learn them all but because they worked at many different studios that used different apps so they were forced to learn the in house software at the time.

Sorry for the novel again user added image

Nilla

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# 8 21-12-2010 , 03:50 PM

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Nova no need to apologise to ME for novel long replies, my average 'short post' is a page or so. And if I manage to keep it shorter you'll notice the next few posts on the thread are from me as well adding something!

I 'HAVE' AE but never really used it, did a tute once implanting a sheep from a stock vid onto this grassy patch on top of a spire of rock sticking out of the ocean... (liked the end result) And something about putting electric text over motorcross riders...? Don't really remember much about it but watching the Apache tute and other youtube vids where they used Fusion, Combustion or others, the ease of use in the flow APPEARS so much easier/more user friendly than I remember AE being. Theres no benefit at all to me 'sticking' to AE. Figured nows the time to jump ship if I'm going to.

Having the same/similar software to what might be used in future tutes here was my biggest concern, being able to get help from others here was a bonus. If I found 90% of users here used shake then even though I've never seen so much as a screenshot of it, that would've made up my mind for me.

As for my rendering to AVI, I guess sometimes I expect too much of my system, I'm not a techhead.. been told the guy who sold me a quad core operated by Vista saw me coming... I'd upped the rate of my particle emitter, upped the life span of the particles, I wasn't just trying to make it snow on one little grid sized plane and my snow storm was to go for about 500 frames... And I was doing other things in the background like playing a Towerdefence game while I waited... I believed because Maya just 'Did It' in the viewport when I hit the play button that I wasn't really asking that much of it! Guess thats still tens if not hundreds of thousands of sprites and there motions to be calculated??? We're beyond 2000 now, PC's can do that in the blink of an eye right??

I have just redone the scene and only 'upped' the settings a smidge... 400 frame Avi now completed with the tutes included tiffs (same error messages present -shrug- ) 20+ minute render time. Still seems long for the output I got... I know the studios have 'Render Farms' but this tute has made me wonder whether it'll take me longer to render my WIP than its taking to MAKE the thing.....

Bullet you're right that is a BS excuse, the imagined lag that he blames for his 'fragging' on his PC can't be more than 1/100 of a second different to mine! But he also likes the bigger screen, my 5.1 bass that makes the windows rattle user added image

My wife has her own PC, not a very good one I'm ashamed to admit, but it runs facebook and Zoo Tycoon just fine. Sims 2 but not Sims 3 very well.

David/Nilla is it better for this site to post vids to Youtube or elsewhere and then link to them here, or does it not really matter?? If i post my snow this isnt really the thread for it anyway.

Learn from others mistakes, it takes too long to make them all yourself.

Last edited by 3dStudent; 21-12-2010 at 03:58 PM.

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# 9 21-12-2010 , 05:26 PM

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bahahah I used to play Unreal Tournament...tell him to get a good ping before hitting the server LOL. Hmmm methinks my missus has the same trouble LOL...I think my tut took bugger all time to batch at 350 frames...then about 5 secs in AE...done. I dont know why you are getting errors though?? thats got me beat..I have never had that trouble..yet.

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 10 21-12-2010 , 05:40 PM

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@3dStudent post your videos on youtube then just link it here. Youtube will automatically compress your video so you want have to post an uncompressed avi.

I'll make a small tutorial for you on creating a video from frames you render from Maya. I'll have it on the site tomorrow. It's really not a good idea to render out to an avi.

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# 11 21-12-2010 , 06:04 PM

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3dStudent for the After Effects I didn't read it properly, I had CS5 in my head not 5 I was thinking how to upgrade user added image

Ten years is a lot for compositing software, as in Maya modeling in an older version vs a new one would make a lot less of a difference than doing something like dynamics where things improved massively. We have two tuts atm on AE, check out how well it compares if it's workable or not with what you have
https://simplymaya.com/autodesk-maya-...=158&sub_cat=0

https://simplymaya.com/autodesk-maya-...=168&sub_cat=0

The first one uses CS3, and the Asteroid Chase I believe is CS5 could be CS4. Davids production workflow also uses CS5 for depth of field
https://simplymaya.com/autodesk-maya-...=182&sub_cat=0

In terms of help Dave's been using AE for many years so he'll be able to help you if you go with this. He also just said to me that this is a lot more user friendly than something like nuke. If you're starting out you can of course go with any software you like, I thought maybe you already had some knowledge on how to use AE in which case it would be a bad idea to switch, but as you're a lifetime member I know we'll definitely have more AE training. For fusion we will not, at least not any time in the near future.

Cheers,

Nilla

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# 12 22-12-2010 , 01:36 AM

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OK after watching the first of those tutes I've decided AE is NOT for me user added image

Will watch the asteroid chase as well, but that first one makes AE look as complicated as I remember it, I think what I'm after is the organic feel node based compositors appear to have. The drag and drop of things onto one another rather than complex menu sets???? but thats just my opinion from watching others use them, we'll see.. Found a trial version of fusion.. So before I fork out the cash I get 30 days to discover I cant work that out either.

Learn from others mistakes, it takes too long to make them all yourself.

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# 13 22-12-2010 , 02:06 AM

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It took me a while but I worked it out....I save my frames as .iff...then AE>import>import multiple...then hit 1st one (.iff)...best guess or something...then I just drag and drop down to the render bar below...done.

Hope you find something good and that will work for you...I have only used AE a couple of times and know nothing about them mate...but its good enough for now...LOL

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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# 14 22-12-2010 , 02:35 PM

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Thx again mate, but its not turning sequential frames into an animation that was stumping me. I've done that countless times with hand-drawn frames of animation. In many different packages. Handdrawn stuff I mostly compile in Adobe Premier, I animate with a tablet directly into Mirage (which could have also imported these iffs if I'd tried to)

This all started because I thought there was a rendering issue/setting in Maya I had buggered up somehow. I was under the impression that as intense as I'd made my scene, I should have been able to just set it to render to avi, hit the button and before I could open the folder it rendered to, it would be there.. Instead after 5 mins when my PC still said it was 0% complete I found that error message and posted here because I thought I'd done something wrong

.... And because I dont speak Techjargonish I couldnt decode "unknown field with tag 37724 (0x935c) encountered"
I understood "Warning" and the filepath to where I had the tiffs, but that didnt help me.
Google sent me to many unhelpful links about ImageMagick.. So I got lazy, I posted here for help knowing I'd soon have some input from you three at least, hopefully someone who speaks binary and understands the scrolling green lines in the matrix movies...
Sadly I didnt communicate my prob very well user added image

and reading my first post now, I see why people believed I couldn't render more than one frame..

But then I opened up the seperate can of worms which is Compositing programs, figuring this is how you guys were compiling your iffs and knowing none of the programs I use handle things like render passes (which I'm going to have to learn about)- I confused my thread by asking what Compositing program everyone recommends?

Anyway after ANOTHER novel... point is I REALLY appreciate your time and inputs, I'm sorry I wasted so much of it... I'm liking Fusion so far, dragged 1st rendered iff into the flow and hey presto the rest automatically followed and it was done, dragged in an image of my Son and neices which seemed to have a similar angled ground plane to my Snow scene and Hoila........

...... well it didnt really work, i merged them together but it didnt look like the kids were standing in snow. But still, I think fusion is the one for me for the time being.

Learn from others mistakes, it takes too long to make them all yourself.

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# 15 23-12-2010 , 01:14 AM

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Sorry I misunderstood mate LOL...no time wasted either mate...thats what we are all here for!!

No it wasnt a novella...but I am undecided who to put my money on...you or Nilla...LOL

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

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