LWO micro exporter for sequences?

Started by Hezza, May 22, 2008, 12:53:41 PM

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Hezza

Hi there,

I was just wondering if its possible to get the micro exporter to dump a file for each frame and number it .001, .002 etc.

I tried the %04d flag that was suggested in another thread but I can't seem to get it to work, it just keeps overwriting the same file test.%04d.lwo

Cheers
Hezza

Matt

This isn't possible yet, but I'll make this work for the next update.

Depending on what you're intending to do with the exported object, perhaps you could get by with a few carefully chosen views that cover the entire animation?

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Hezza

#2
Well its not essential but I thought it'd be nice to have a poly copy of each frame as its rendered (if its pretty much for free, just dumps out a lwo file at the end of each render) I know it might not be an exact match from what i've read but it could be useful for doing zDepth and other passes in maya.

We've kind of ironed out most of the kinks so far, getting gemoetry and camera data between maya and terragen is all sorted, batch/network rendering is going etc

There's still a few things that are weird like co-ordinate systems and how maya and terragen handle rotational ordering but otherwise it seems to be holding up  :)

Don't suppose there's any news on when a new release will be available?

Cheers

EDIT:
Oh yeah, one other quick question. Do you have any information on terragens field of view settings on the camera? I can't seem to find a direct relation between terragen and maya's settings, i've just been taking a rendered frame from terragen, loading it as an image plane and eye-balling maya's camera focal length until it matches. If I change the aspect ratio of the render in terragen (say from 640x480 to 1280x720) I need to change the focal length in maya again.

Hezza

Actually this feature would be really useful for making comping masks for realflow and particle effects....

Tangled-Universe

Aside from your technical problem this all sounds very interesting what you're doing Hezza!
Is there a possibilty we can see something of what you're working on or can we get to see the final result?

Martin

Matt

#5
If the FOV needs changing whenever you change the aspect ratio, it's probably because Maya is locking vertical FOV or aperture whereas TG defaults to horizontal. In TG's camera you can switch to vertical FOV, and then once you've matched the FOV to the Maya camera it shouldn't need to change again.

I will make TG read focal length and aperture settings in future, but I think there are sometimes inconsistencies between different apps (maybe my understanding of that is outdated and maybe things are well standardised now). Can you give me an example of vertical FOV in TG matching vertical aperture and focal length in Maya? I'll use these to verify that my understanding of the maths is correct so I can implement this when I get a chance.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Matt

#6
Quote from: Hezza on May 23, 2008, 05:46:05 AM
Well its not essential but I thought it'd be nice to have a poly copy of each frame as its rendered (if its pretty much for free, just dumps out a lwo file at the end of each render) I know it might not be an exact match from what i've read but it could be useful for doing zDepth and other passes in maya.

It's not quite free, but it usually doesn't add too much to render times. It will depend on your scene.

The LWO exporter will run into problems at higher detail levels or resolutions. You might not be able to export at the same detail level as your beauty pass.

Quote
Don't suppose there's any news on when a new release will be available?

I can't give a solid date on that, but we're going to release another Tech Preview update or go straight to the Beta in the next few weeks.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Hezza

Quote from: Matt on May 23, 2008, 11:48:32 AM
The LWO exporter will run into problems at higher detail levels or resolutions. You might not be able to export at the same detail level as your beauty pass.

Yeah I was using the LWO exporter to start with but we've now got a maya plug-in coded that generates the landscape directly from a ter file. The largest i've got in so far is 2048x2048 points which comes in around 4mil polys (the plug-ins only compiled for 32bit at the minute so memory limits are an issue, gonna try and get a 64bit version done), its pretty accurate but doesn't quite hold up when you have forground hills/mountains passing over distant objects. Can still get a half decent zDepth out of it but actually having the scene dumped from the camera view would be so much nicer for draw distances and accuracy.

I'll have a play with the camera properly next week and post anything I find out and its good to hear about the next update :)

Thanks for your help
Hezza