Rendering Hardware Particles to File?

# 1 28-06-2003 , 01:32 PM

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Join Date: May 2003

Posts: 136

I'm trying to render a simple particle scene consisting of 500 frames for testing.

If I play the animation just within Maya everything works as expected. If I render any given frame from the RenderView using Hardware Rendering, it renders fine and as expected.

I have set my RenderGlobals as shown in the attached file, but all that happens when I go to Renderout the animation to .TGA files in the BatchRender icon, it only renders 10 frames instead of 500 and even worse, the 10 frames it does render...it renders as and AVI!!!!

What is happening here?

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"Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn’t have time to build it to scale or to paint it"
:: Dr. Emmett Brown

Last edited by sjurick; 28-06-2003 at 01:37 PM.

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# 2 28-06-2003 , 05:36 PM

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Location: Minnesota, USA

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In your LAST image abouve, there is a tab named: "Maya Hardware", make sure you have your settings correct in that part before you begin the following steps:

I'm going to answer YOUR question, as well as reveal a fix/workaround for those of us that still have not upgraded our graphics cards yet, but STILL NEED to work with hardware objects and paricles.

Ok, since you said that when you render one frame using Hardware, it renders fine, that solves my first question to you:
1. Do you have a qualified Graphics card with Hardware Overlay capability?
Maya 5's new "render using Hardware" feature REQUIRES a qualified card now.

HOWEVER, I've found a workaround for this, AND found an answer for you in the process of experimentation:

I am an old fart, and as such, my video card doesn't qualify to take advantage of the hardware batch feature.

When I try, I get the following error message:
// Error: Graphics card capabilities are insufficient for rendering. Batch Render aborted. //

THIS DOES NOT mean that I/YOU CANNOT render hardware objects or particles!

YOU CAN! whoohoo!

If your card is old like mine, you will get this error.

Here is how to fix the issue, AND/OR here is probably why you are only getting a 10 frame render using the new Batch hardware render function:

Feel free to setup your batch hardware settings the way that you want.

THEN:

Instead of using that new feature, treat your situation JUST LIKE MAYA 4.5 and older!

1. Go up to WINDOW > RENDERING EDITORS > HARDWARE RENDER BUFFER.

2. Go to the RENDER > ATTRIBUTES menu, and REset all of your hardware settings like, frame start and end times, frame size and aspect ratio, shading, lighting etc.

3. Then, simply preform your hardware render from the Hardware Render Buffer like we always have! Easy.

Good luck!

PS, about the avi setting, I'm not sure about that one, I'm still looking user added image

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

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# 3 29-06-2003 , 01:33 AM

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Yes, that works. The attributes in the HW Render Attributes were set to Start Frame 1, end Frame 10. Changed that to 500, then chose .TGA for image format and away went the hard drive.

If you ever figure out why it was initially trying to render to .avi let me know. Now that I know about the HW Render Attribs. Things will be better I'm sure. Thanks for taking the time to research this little issue.

You da man user added image

"Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn’t have time to build it to scale or to paint it"
:: Dr. Emmett Brown

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# 4 29-06-2003 , 02:03 AM

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Location: Minnesota, USA

Posts: 3,709

No problem at all dude, that's what this community is here for, and all about user added image

Still not sure on the avi thing, but in time, I'll find out why user added image

It's kinda strange that A|W has added a separate HW render globals attribute editor to the render globals, when you still have to go in and match everything up in the "new" globals as well.

It's now like we have to do it twice in order to render the same shot?

Well, I'll see if that is true once I upgrade my vid card this fall.

Post a movie of your shot when you get a chance eh?

Good luck, and keep rendering!

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

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# 5 29-06-2003 , 03:48 PM

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Thanks man. I appreciate all of your help.

Yes, I agree. It's kinda funky how the HW Rendering is somehow segregated from the touted "all common globals interface new to 5.0". They were using that as a selling point, but now we know different huh? Not a big deal, just shouldn't have to spend hours trying to figure it out.

My guess on the .avi thing is that there is either a bug or a cached setting in my prefs, or something. Don't know.

As for posting a render of the particles. It was basically a test to get used to rendering hardware particles and playing around with different ramp settings and live/die ratios - stuff like that.

You can see it on my web site. www.sdreams.com. go to gallery, 3D animation and Test Renders. I have very little that's actually uploaded to the site, but it's growing slowly as I have time to get some projects rendered.

"Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn’t have time to build it to scale or to paint it"
:: Dr. Emmett Brown

Last edited by sjurick; 29-06-2003 at 04:28 PM.

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# 6 29-06-2003 , 06:35 PM

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Location: Minnesota, USA

Posts: 3,709

Cool m8!

Yeah, sometimes the tests that we do while testing settings, i.e. playing around, is the only way to discover new and more interesting things about the Maya Dynamics package user added image

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

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