Animated Camera export

[VelvetElvis]

When exporting from Max to Vantage to render an animation. If I have already animated my camera in Max, what is the best way to export? If I export the vrscene, it feels like it is saving a vrscene for each frame of animation which leads to a massive export file. Is that correct? Would it just be better to animate the camera in Vantage, though with the current controls that is kind of clunky to do. Could I export the geometry as one scene file and the animated camera in max as another scene file and merge them together?

Thanks!

[vladimir.nedev]

If I export the vrscene, it feels like it is saving a vrscene for each frame of animation which leads to a massive export file. Is that correct?

Yes and no. It is saving a frame for each animated parameter of a .vrscene object.
So, if only the camera position is animated, you should have keyframes only for that.
If you have deforming meshes in your scene, this can lead to huge files, yes.

Would it just be better to animate the camera in Vantage, though with the current controls that is kind of clunky to do.

Can you tell us what controls you miss the most ?

Could I export the geometry as one scene file and the animated camera in max as another scene file and merge them together?

I think we had an option to load just the camera from a .vrscene file, but removed it somewhere along the way.
Still, I can't remember if it worked in animation, since you could potentially have two different animation ranges in the original and the "camera only" scene.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[VelvetElvis]

The controls themselves are not clunky in any exact way, it's just different than the other programs I'm in on a daily basis. I bounce between UE4, Lumion/Twinmotion, Enscape, and Vantage quite a bit depending on which project team I'm helping. Vantage is the only one that is different in needing to hold down the mouse button to move. Being able to customize the movement controls would be nice.

I'm also not on the best GPU at the moment, so trying to move the camera around at 4-8 FPS doesn't help. I just need to remember that when I'm doing camera work to disable GI/Reflections/Refractions.

[npg]

Actually you can move around without holding RMB in "free look" mode which can be toggled with the backtick/tilde key ( ` ). We added the right click "quick" mode for things like briefly rotating the camera, not so much for exploring.

Lowering the render resolution (in stretch mode) is another way to increase fps for navigation.

[RobT614]

I have found one workaround to bring 3dsMax cameras into Vantage. It involves recording movement during a live link session. In order to get smooth playback I use a completely blank scene except for the camera. At first I tried this at real-time speeds, but it was still choppy. So you need to use the 1/4 playback speed option in Max.

Here are the steps I used.
1. Start both Vantage and Max with empty scenes, then merge the max camera you want into the blank Max scene.
2. Set the playback speed of the max camera to 1/4 (this is important to eliminate stuttering during the recording) Now start the live link and start recording camera movement, and then play the max camera.
This will take 4 times as long obviously, after its done you will have an animated camera in a blank Vantage scene.
3. Save the scene, Ill call it MaxCam.vantage.
4. Now open the vantage scene that has your scene in it. (or start a new one and load the vrayscene file)
5. Now you can open the MaxCamera.vantage scene, and at the prompt, open it as a config file, this will merge the animated camera into your scene.

The only thing to remember is to render your frames at 6fps instead of 24fps. Hope this helps. I dont think this will be useful if you are compositing these frames with any Max generated frames, but it sure is useful for a Vantage only process. I almost abandoned Vantage over the lack of camera support, but this will defiantly make quick preview animations super fast.

[Luma3d]

I agree on the clunky aspect of setting animations in Vantage. I have to drag the last camera first, the first camera last in order to get the sequence I desire. Then...I need to add a transition? to tell Vantage to animate between two points. To add to this I have to drag the time sequence to the correct timing of the animation...10 sec, 20 sec...etc. I also have to make sure that the beginning is scaled to a thin slice, otherwise I'll get 30 frames of the same image. This is considered very clunky. Most real-time apps like Enscape allow you to set a starting keyframe and end keyframe. And you're done. Preview and adjust as needed. And their render times are in sec/min vs hours for a complete sequence. These are you competitors.