Vray proxy mesh animation parameters

[nights]

Seems like there is a problem with the "start offset" in the animation parameters of a proxy mesh (created by the ply2vrmesh cmd tool).
Even if i set the "start offset" there is no effect on the vray proxy. Also tried setting the timewarp with no effect. Is there no way to actually offset the animation?

Think that the other parameters in animation parameters like playback speed has no effect either.

Anyone know whats going on??

[t.petrov]

Hi,

What version of V-Ray and Maya are you using? What OS?
Can you give send us a simple vrmesh file which reproduces the problem?

/Teodor

[nights]

Dear Teodor,

Thank you very much for following up.

I'm evaluating on Windows7, Vray version 2.00.04 with Maya 2012.

I supplied a mesh from the sequence (its 1-768 frames long) its 33.6mb in size (mesh was converted to vrproxy from a RealFlow mesh in bin format).
I will make it available for a couple of days on this address: https://maishoku-images.s3.amazonaws...h100283.vrmesh

Thank you very much again.

Best regards,

[yolov]

Hi,

The vrmesh you provided doesn't seem to have any animation. You can check this by rynning the ply2vrmesh tool with "ply2vrmesh C:\path_to_filename -info" command (without the quotation marks "" ). It should say, among other things, how many frames of animation are written to the file.

Best regards,
yolov

[nights]

Hi yolov,

Thank you very much for your time.

Ok then i understand, however i used the ply2vrmesh to convert a sequence of meshes and the mesh i sent you was one of the output meshes. Since i'm able to render a velocity pass correctly from this mesh sequence I believed animation must be working. (outputted velocity vectors for this video this way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xpTc7SLjA )

There is another option to convert realflow meshes to vray proxy by using the "Create vray proxy" option from the vray UI in maya. I believe if i use this the proxy will be one file instead of a sequence of files and animation will work properly. But, unfortunately this tool crashes after the output file size reaches around 6gb (300 frames).

Is there perhaps a way to merge the single vray proxy files into one animation containing all data?

Thanks again & best regards,

[t.petrov]

There is another option to convert realflow meshes to vray proxy by using the "Create vray proxy" option from the vray UI in maya. I believe if i use this the proxy will be one file instead of a sequence of files and animation will work properly. But, unfortunately this tool crashes after the output file size reaches around 6gb (300 frames).

Can you describe the exact steps needed to reproduce the crash?

Is there perhaps a way to merge the single vray proxy files into one animation containing all data?

Here is an excerpt from the help for the ply2vrmesh tool. It explains how to merge multiple input file into a single vrmesh file.

Usage:
  ply2vrmesh <inputFile> [<outputFile>] [options]
or
  ply2vrmesh <vrmeshFile> -info [options]

Arguments:
  <inputFile>      - .ply .obj .bin .geo (.hclassic) or .bgeo (.bhclassic) file
                     name. The string may include wildcards.

  <outputFile>     - .vrmesh file name (extension must be specified). This
                     string may not include wildcards. If this is not specified
                     then the output is a file with the same name, but with the
                     .vrmesh extension. If multiple input files are specified
                     and <outputFile> is missing, then each input file will be
                     written to a separate .vrmesh file. If multiple input
                     files are specified and <outputFile> is also specified,
                     all input files are sorted in lexic order and concatenated
                     into one animated .vrmesh file.

/Teodor

[nights]

Dear Teodor,

Thank you very much for the quick reply.

I will try to use the create proxy feature again before i claim it does crash, maybe i just ran out of memory (but looked like there was atleast 6gb free at the time maya crashed).

Thank you for letting me know its possible to merge multiple files into one, that probably will be the solution I think.

Let me come back once i have tried this solution and verified that this fixes the animation offset.

Thank you very much again,

[nights]

Dear Teodor,

Unfortunately i get an error this time when using the command line tool to try to convert the realflow mesh in bin format, strange because this has worked before.

Thought you might be interested in the error log and the input file.

link to first mesh of a long sequence (700 frames) which the tool seem to have trouble converting:
https://maishoku-images.s3.amazonaws...RK01_00000.bin

output log:
C:\-----------\Maya 2012 for x64\bin\ply2vrmesh.exe" ParticleMesh_RK01_*.bin outputmesh.vrmesh
Coverter of .ply .obj .bin and .geo files to .vrmesh files
Copyright (C) 2003-2011 by Chaos Group Ltd. All rights reserved.

Converting file "ParticleMesh_RK01_00000.bin"
Output file is "outputmesh.vrmesh"
Reading .bin fileError reading file: [VUtils::RFBinInterface::readFile] Unknown chunk ID: bf2155fb

Error writing file: [VUtils::RFBinInterface::readFile] Unknown chunk ID: bf2155fb

Thought it might also help you to point out there is a spelling mistake in the tool output (search for "coverter").

Tried to export the sequence directly from maya again also, but this failed again (second attempt) after 40 minutes so i have given up on using that tool.
If you are interested i can post another error report for that but since the input is more than 29gb its a bit difficult to give you all the data.

Thank you very much in advance

best regards

[t.petrov]

As far as I can see the file you've provided doesn't follow the spec we have for realflow 4 files.
It seems the number of vertices and faces is both zero. Are you sure there is a mesh in this file?

What software have you used to generate the file?
Also make sure you export the data as mesh, not particles. ply2vrmesh supports only .bin file containing meshes.

/Teodor

[nights]

Dear Teodor,

Yes, the bin is a mesh sequence not particles (btw its realflow5 but maybe the mesh format is the same?). What i sent is a the first frame of 700, however the mesh only first appears from frame 101, and that is why the tool failed. When i moved frame 1-100 to a sub category temporarily while generating the proxies it works to generate finally! Great. Maybe allow empty realflow .bin files for processing to vrmesh from now? since this is not easy to understand if you wouldnt have told me i would have thought the entire sequence is incompatible

Again, thank you very much for your kind help.

Best regards,

[t.petrov]

The version of the file is 4.
But, it doesn't follow the specification we have.
This is why the tool failed.