TV Video

[natalia.gruzdova]

vladimir.nedev we have received both Rhino scene and vrscene from seltzdesign in the ticket regarding this forum post. I will share it with you for further investigation.

[vladimir.nedev]

vladimir.nedev we received have both Rhino scene and vrscene from seltzdesign in the ticket regarding this forum post. I will share it with you for further investigation.

Oh, thanks, I didn't know the discussion started elsewhere.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[natalia.gruzdova]

We have tested the scene that seltzdesignhave forwarded in a ticket and most likely the necessary step to Get From Active Rhino Viewport in Grasshopper (as described in this post) was omitted.



So once you have loaded the script make sure to:

• Set Frame Count.
• Right-click on the Camera to specify > Get From Active Rhino Viewport.
• Right-click on the Render in Project > Export Camera Animation.

Once the Camera Animation is exported, enable Animation settings in the V-Ray Asset Editor, select Animation Source > Grasshopper.
Just to make sure you can toggle the Get Animation Range button (Time Segment set to Frame Range) to update the frame count.
Once this is set you can render animation with image sequence in V-Ray.

Regarding rendering animation with image sequence in Vantage:

In Rhino image sequence can not be rendered via Live Link. In order to render image sequences in Vantage .vrscene has to be exported and loaded.

In Vantage load the .vrscene and check if there is animation in the textures by scrubbing the timeline and press the Update sequence button on the right. For performance reasons the animated textures will not update during preview playback - hit the U key to make them update for the current frame.



The animated textures will update automatically in high quality (offline) render from Tools > High Quality Render.



Additionally I wanted to clarify about IFL file usage:
At this point if you want/need to change Sequence settings (Playback Speed and Playback Type) you have to use .ifl. More information and workflow specifics can be found in this forum thread.


In case if you want to render foe example 300 frames and you have 300 sequence images prepared for each frame in which case there is no need to specify Playback Type and Speed you do not need the .ifl. The only condition is that the naming of the images corresponds to the frame number (e.g.image.0001.png, image.0002.png, etc.)

I am adding two simple scenes with and without .ifl using Grasshopper script for the camera animation for anyone to test.
Rhino_Vantage_sequence.zip

[seltzdesign]

Thanks natalia.gruzdova and vladimir.nedev for working this out.

In Rhino image sequence can not be rendered via Live Link.

Why not? Could you add that as a feature request? I don't see why that should not work as well. But I guess its as much Rhino's fault as it is Vantages. V-Ray for Grasshopper should be able to send the scene to Vantage directly. Then at least we could do everything in Grasshopper, which I would greatly appreciate.

Also like was discussed a long time ago, please please please don't have things in Grasshopper that you can only trigger by right-clicking on a component. It's not how Grasshopper is designed to work and everything should be triggerable by booleans. Having stuff in right-click menus, means you break the Grasshopper logic and it prevents more complex setups from being created! So ideally all the options should be triggerable by booleans, also sending the viewport to rhino, render animaton, etc.

But thanks for taking the time and effort to get this working. I will try it again with everything you mentioned. It's a LOT of things that have to be just right for it to work.

[Luma3d]

What does DCC stand for again...Discrete Certified...?

[vladimir.nedev]

Why not? Could you add that as a feature request? I don't see why that should not work as well. But I guess its as much Rhino's fault as it is Vantages.

It's not an issue on the Vantage side i.e. no change is required in Vantage.

What does DCC stand for again...Discrete Certified...?

It's short for Digital Content Creation (tool) i.e. 3dsMax/Maya/SketchUp/etc, but the "tool" part is often omitted.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[seltzdesign]

You will notice the Bitmap preview will then change to display the very first of the image sequence files

I am currently trying this and it is still showing just a grey image. I renamed all the files to start at 1. When I select my first image I just get a grey material:



Not sure what is wrong with my images. I will add the first 10 or so to a zip as attachment. Okay, forget that, upload limit is 10MB *facepalm* Here is a Dropbox Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/npvwqqcqn7...quare.zip?dl=0

What am I doing wrong or what is wrong with the image sequence??

I render with Sequence off:



With sequence on:


Why is it so difficult to render a sequence of images!?

[seltzdesign]

Okay, I am partly getting somewhere:

I simply exported what I had as a .vrscene and loaded it in Vantage. The first frame was grey, but subsequent frames are the actual sequence and it was updating.

I went back to Rhino and changed something about the material and made sure there are only images in the folder. There was the .ifl file still in there, so I assume it was taking that for the first frame? But if the sequence has to start at 0001, meaning it is actively looking to match the number of the frame to the file, then why would it simply take the first file, even if that has no numbers in it!? Either the logic is smart and for frame 1 it looks for a file with sequence number 1 or it is not smart and simply takes the first file for the first frame, but then it also doesn't need to start at 0001.

Which is it?

After I had done the changes, the material now shows the correct image, even with sequence on. But now the V-Ray renderer in Rhino still shows grey in the render?

I exported again as a .vrscene, but when I open it it Vantage now, there is no animation at all. If I add a camera animation, the frame does not change.

Why is this so finnicky?

I will upload both .vrscene files. Can you find out what is different in them and why one has the animation and one doesn't. As far as I can tell nothing has changed in Rhino as far as Animation and I have double-checked all steps.

[vladimir.nedev]

There was the .ifl file still in there, so I assume it was taking that for the first frame? But if the sequence has to start at 0001, meaning it is actively looking to match the number of the frame to the file, then why would it simply take the first file, even if that has no numbers in it!?

There is no such logic, it must be something else.

I will upload both .vrscene files. Can you find out what is different in them and why one has the animation and one doesn't. As far as I can tell nothing has changed in Rhino as far as Animation and I have double-checked all steps.

If you search for SettingsOutput in both files, the animated one has
frames=List(List(0, 509));
while the other one has
frames=ListInt( 2);

This also means your animation starts from frame 0, so the first image has to be named sm-square000.jpg, not sm-square001.jpg

If I add a camera animation, the frame does not change.

The imported vrscene has its own "animation track", which in this case (frames=ListInt( 2);) has a single frame, that's why it doesn't change.
We have plans to improve this, so the imported scene's animation duration is extended to match the Vantage cameras animation duration.
But for now, the vrscene file has to have the necessary animation range.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[seltzdesign]

There is no such logic, it must be something else.

Thanks, I didn't realize that a .vrscene file is readable and editable in a text editor.

Maybe something that I notice is weird and might be the cause of the issue:



That doesn't seem right. Shouldn't that be 0 or 1?

If you search for SettingsOutput in both files, the animated one has
frames=List(List(0, 509));
while the other one has
frames=ListInt( 2);

This also means your animation starts from frame 0, so the first image has to be named sm-square000.jpg, not sm-square001.jpg

The imported vrscene has its own "animation track", which in this case (frames=ListInt( 2);) has a single frame, that's why it doesn't change.
We have plans to improve this, so the imported scene's animation duration is extended to match the Vantage cameras animation duration.
But for now, the vrscene file has to have the necessary animation range.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

Okay, but now I am wondering how that "2" integer got in there. It would mean it is only rendering frame 2!? But my start and end range did not change in the Asset Editor. It's still set on Grasshopper and if I get the Animation Range it is between 0 and 509.

How could this be changed to just 2 in there?

Anyways, I tried the whole process again today and it was working now, so I think I finally got it down. Should it not have an animation I know what to look for now in the file.


If there was one change I would make then it would be how you handle sequences in Image Textures. I think they should each have their own start and end frame with a button to Get Animation Range and it just scans how many images you have in the sequence, like so:




Then in the Animation Source in the main V-Ray settings there could be an option to use "Sequences" as the animation source.




This would be even better if you could have named sequences, similar to how you can have named UVW Placements. Then in the dropdown you could even see the name of the specific sequence.

I hope that makes sense.

[vladimir.nedev]

That doesn't seem right. Shouldn't that be 0 or 1?

"frame_number=-2147483648;" means - use the current animation frame.
Why the special value - the frame_number itself can be an animated parameter.
For example V-Ray for Cinema4D animates it, which allows control over looping/etc based on the 3d app features for animated image sequences.
So it's normal.

Okay, but now I am wondering how that "2" integer got in there. It would mean it is only rendering frame 2!? But my start and end range did not change in the Asset Editor. It's still set on Grasshopper and if I get the Animation Range it is between 0 and 509.

How could this be changed to just 2 in there?

I don't know, that's in the V-Ray for Rhino code.

If there was one change I would make then it would be how you handle sequences in Image Textures. I think they should each have their own start and end frame with a button to Get Animation Range and it just scans how many images you have in the sequence, like so:

I will at konstantin_chaos since his team will be working on this as mentioned in the other thread here:
https://forums.chaos.com/forum/v-ray...58#post1178658

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[jymontoya]

Hello,

I'm wondering when we will finally be able to simply use .mp4 video files as emissive materials in Vantage? This is so much simpler in Twinmotion and others to create video on TV screens and LED tiles in animations.

Thank you.