Playblast Laaaaaaaaaagging

# 1 10-01-2007 , 12:44 AM

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Location: LA, CA

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I'm trying to playblast a 13 second scene and it's taking about four seconds per frame. I can't justify hanging around for 23 minutes while playblast does it's thing, or in my experience stops half way through. Is there anything I can do to improve my playblast performance?

I need a job

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# 2 10-01-2007 , 04:52 AM

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You could swith off geometry you dont need to see. view it in wireframe, convert any rigid dynamics to keyframes, cache and cloth, fluids, or particles, or use lower geo stand ins.

Or if non of these really work you might need to upgrade your PC

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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# 3 10-01-2007 , 08:47 AM

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Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Bolton - UK

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Yer try what gster123 said because it sould not be that slow.

How r you playblasting - to video - image seq. are you auto deleteing the temp files/saving the file.

also try doing it in smaller bits (4/5 seconds then put them togeather after)
or turning down the scale.

I also found this set of pluggin awhile back now.

Pluggin Link

In there is a improved playblast script which allows you set a number of extra settings that maya just does not have (playblast to quick time my personal fav). The main improvemnet I found with it is that its got to be 80% more stable.

There are also so many little extra pluggins in there that have become a major part of my work flow.(animation casher, auto save, bunch of polytools)

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# 4 10-01-2007 , 08:58 AM

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Right click on your maya shortcut, properties, compatibility > Run for compatibility with Windows 2000

That solves the stopping halfway through, not sure about the speed issue, it might fix that too.

Game art WIP - Speeder Bike
Game art WIP - Speeder Bike Rider
Game art WIP - Ornathopter!

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# 5 10-01-2007 , 10:08 AM

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Originally posted by petrol
Right click on your maya shortcut, properties, compatibility > Run for compatibility with Windows 2000

Originally Posted by

Is there some problem with maya and xp then ???

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# 6 10-01-2007 , 10:19 AM

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No not really, it's just a bug as far as i know. I have absolutely no idea why playblast doesnt work properly in normal mode.

Game art WIP - Speeder Bike
Game art WIP - Speeder Bike Rider
Game art WIP - Ornathopter!

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# 7 10-01-2007 , 01:03 PM

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Location: LA, CA

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Thanks guys. I will try what I can when I get to class tonight. My teacher told me that to get playblast running faster, I need to delete my preferences, make sure as much history is deleted as possible, and "clean it up" by importing the whole scene into a new scene, which doesn't make any sense to me. I think my teacher's a joke.

gster: Thanks for the tips. I'm a newbie still to the program, so I've kept in bold the parts of your post I do not understand. If someone would like to elaborate for me I'd really appreciate it!

Originally posted by gster123
You could swith off geometry you dont need to see. view it in wireframe, convert any rigid dynamics to keyframes, cache and cloth, fluids, or particles, or use lower geo stand ins.

Or if non of these really work you might need to upgrade your PC

Originally Posted by

The PC's we're using aren't bad. 3.2GHz Core Duo's w/ 1Gb o' ram. It's a fairly heavy scene, but it's not THAT loaded w/ geometry.

I need a job

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# 8 11-01-2007 , 02:55 AM

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For the dynamics you can bake the calculation into keyframes (cant remember off the top of my head where it is, a look in the help files should tell you).

You and cache the fluid's, and particles so that it dosent have to calculate everything per frame, think thats justin Particles->cache (I think) its the same for fluids etc.

Oh for running Maya with windows 2000 settings is solves a few little errors as Petrol said, one would be if your rendering a frame and go to a different program (say IE) then back to maya it can be a white screeen that looks like its crashed (which it hasn't) when mayas running with XP settings, if you run in 2000 settings then this dosent happen. Just one example (that is with maya 6 and 7 not sure about 8)

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Last edited by gster123; 11-01-2007 at 03:37 AM.

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