Making a video a texture

# 1 09-12-2008 , 04:05 PM

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Join Date: Dec 2007

Posts: 46

Hi all,

Anyone know what format, etc a video needs to be to be added to a texture? I was testing it the other day and created a plane (flat object, not the thing that flies) and it worked fine with an AVI i added to it, but when i tried to add a different AVI it wouldn't work, and every clip i have tried since has said "failed to convert to maya.iff", any ideas?

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# 2 09-12-2008 , 06:10 PM

Acid44

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Posts: n/a

i dont have maya in front of me right now but i think you need to use an image sequence for it, then when you're applying the image sequence as a video texture or w/e there should be an option to use an image sequence, could be wrong though....

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# 3 09-12-2008 , 09:53 PM

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Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Plantation, Florida

Posts: 1,568

Maya is fickle when it comes to using movies as a texture. Uncompressed AVI's are best, but files size is an issue. IT also depends on the compression/codec that the AVI uses. Bootleg videos tend not to work in most occasions. My students are notorious for this and I have to tell them every time, "Go buy the DVD". It's something with the way they're compressed.

Image sequences are best. You can't go wrong with loading a sequence of jpg's, tga's, or tiff's. But here's the kicker... The image sequence numbers and the start frame in Maya have to be the same.

Example: Let's say you've rendered some frames from a shot that starts at frame 200. If you plug the sequence in and try to play it, it won't work. You must set the timeline in Maya to start at frame 200 first, then it will work.

When you create the material node and click on the map button, choose the MOVIE TEXTURE from the Create Render Node menu that pops up. Then, in the attribute editor for that texture ( Which should also pop up - if it doesn't, dbl-click on the material in the hypershade to open it then go to the Movie # tab) plug the movie in by clicking on the folder icon listed under the File Attributes section. Next, click on Use Image Sequence. The image number should turn purple/pink (depending on your version) and the movie should play.

Now, here's the weird thing. I've found that sometimes the movie will work fine at first but then stops playing. If it does, un-check Use Image Sequence and play it. It surprisingly will work.

user added image

Dave Baer
Professor of Digital Arts
Digital Media Arts College
Boca Raton, Florida
dbaer@dmac.edu

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# 4 10-12-2008 , 02:38 AM

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Join Date: Dec 2007

Posts: 46

thanks for the ideas guys, i wanted to try and stay away from image sequences because i knew they would be a pain in the arse to synchronise. I guess i'll just have to fiddle around with bitrates and codecs etc.

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# 5 10-12-2008 , 01:06 PM

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Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Minnesota, USA

Posts: 3,709

Thanks for the tips Dave user added image

I moved this thread, and made it a sticky for those looking for this answer quickly.

Rock on.

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

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# 6 04-04-2009 , 12:42 PM

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Join Date: Apr 2009

Posts: 2

hiho

i am working on a scene in which there should be lets say 50 cubes and each of them is rotating individually.

on one face of each cube, there should be a movie.

now the camera walkes through this, showing some short glimpse of whats "on this cube"

i have posted this on the area-forums.

and i still have one problem, the movie won't play
the size doesnt fit, but i guess i can figure that out.

so how do i get the movies to play?

the movies i talk about are captured with fraps (warhammer online), the output format is avi.
when i rendered certain scenes in different formats and then attached them to the face
of the cube it says in the output window:

ERROR, Cannot open AVI (Microsoft® audio/visual interleaved) file “C:/ XXXXXXX / *.avi” as an image file:
it contains no image tracks MF did not recognise image file C:/ XXXXXXX / *.avi.

then i tried the quasi-raw-avi from fraps directly, it worked

i made a new test-scene to try this out, you can see it on the attached image(batch rendering of a random frame).

batchrender random frame (host: imageshack)

now i tried different ways to render that video (i chose 1-100 frames)
maya's output-format was set to *.targa

i did not use high quality settings.
the only things i created in this scene (and which i wanted to render) are:

a cube (which rotates randomly)
the movie applied to one face (i chose surfaceshader/color-out->movie)

the output showed the animation of the cube
BUT the movie i attached to the face did not do anything
in fact the only frame that was renderd was frame one of the movie, for the entire lenght of
the animation.

i have tried this in two ways:
movie format is *.avi
timeline settings: play every frame

1st: select the face, apply surface shader, select color output (box) ->apply movie

2nd: select the face, apply 2d texture (movie)

ah, ere i forget:

the movies on the cubes should cycle, each of them got
its own playtime, i think i can reduce the playlength to a common denominator, i would have to cut the video anyway,..
but i am not so sure about the image-sequenze, because
there should be 50 cubes - 50 movies- 25fps, that would be a real mess

thanks in advance
cheers

Last edited by slaunkz; 04-04-2009 at 04:24 PM.

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# 7 04-04-2009 , 05:14 PM

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Join Date: Apr 2009

Posts: 2

well it finally worked.

i made a cube and a nurbs plane -> group it

surface shader -> color out > movie (select your file)

__________________________________________
i used fraps to capture ingame footage
cut a video at its 50th frame, saved as avi (sony vegas)
then used to virtual dub (video->compression->avi(uncompressed rgb/ycbCr))

applied this to the nurbs plane

preferences -> timeslider set to length of my video (50fps)
play every frame

in the the work area double click on the video-node so
that the attribute editor will pop up again

now set a tick in "use image sequence"
you can set the number of images from your video
that should be displayed

animate the cube

rendersettings:

name.#.ext
*.targa

number of frames rendered: were set to 50

i rendered it, when i make a movie out of this
targa files i see a rotating cube and a movie playing on it

cheers user added image

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# 8 14-06-2015 , 07:32 AM

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Join Date: Jun 2015

Posts: 2

hey,

same problem with me.
my batch render is not working. i have small project in which i am using camera moment and a simple book animation, in side the book i am trying to put a movie in a page but neither maya software nor mental ray is rendering.

in maya software batch rendering is just rendering one frame which is not visable. and in mentel ray video showing in black

Pls help, need it urgent

Sorry for my bad english.

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