AXYZ Anima people in lmedium or large quantity

[cgrant3d_cg]

Hello, we are starting to use Vantage for our presentations, but the workflow with Anima people seems a little convoluted.
We prep our architectural models inside 3D Max, then we add the people with AXYZ 's Anima, import to 3D Max, and then save all those people as a VRay scene.
With this workflow we end up with 20 Gb or 40 Gb vrayscene files. We are not using that many people, really, I think about 20 or 30 max; I've seen videos on the Chaos website of scenes with hundreds of people. I can't even imagine how large those VRayscene files are.
Are we using the correct workflow? Is there a better way, like loading the anima people directly into Vantage?
Your input is appreciated.

[Phillip Miller]

Most people using Anima with Vantage do it through Livelinking to 3ds Max. This is how the marketing video for Vantage 2.0 was produced. Have you tried this approach yet?

[cgrant3d_cg]

Most people using Anima with Vantage do it through Livelinking to 3ds Max. This is how the marketing video for Vantage 2.0 was produced. Have you tried this approach yet?

I wonder about that because when I use Live link, and then I close Vantage it doesn't reload the people or the scene, it asks me to save a vray scene.
I there a way to use live link and maintain the scene?
I also noticed that while using live link if my scene has Itoo forest not all the plants are loaded, only the one that you seen on the screen when you fire up vantage.

[vladimir.nedev]

I wonder about that because when I use Live link, and then I close Vantage it doesn't reload the people or the scene, it asks me to save a vray scene.
I there a way to use live link and maintain the scene?

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. While in a live link, you can save your Vantage changes from File->Save Scene.
Later, after you start a live link from the same max file, you can use File -> Open scene as config only to load the previously saved Vantage file.

I also noticed that while using live link if my scene has Itoo forest not all the plants are loaded, only the one that you seen on the screen when you fire up vantage.

This might be caused by "frustum culling" being enabled in the Forest Pro object.
You should generally disable it with Vantage - if your camera is animated it will make the Forest Pro object animated too and reexport it on each frame change (this also makes for a huge vrscene file).

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[rita_sobral]

Phillip Miller and vladimir.nedev how do you do this through live link? Live link does not contain any animation information so when you try to export a sequence nothing is animated? When I have test anima, or anything animated for that fact it is the same for me huge vrscene files up to 80gb sometimes even with compression

[vladimir.nedev]

Phillip Miller and vladimir.nedev how do you do this through live link? Live link does not contain any animation information so when you try to export a sequence nothing is animated? When I have test anima, or anything animated for that fact it is the same for me huge vrscene files up to 80gb sometimes even with compression

You can render an animation through the live link by using the "Render animation with Chaos Vantage" button in the Vantage toolbar in 3dsMax.



Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[rita_sobral]

OK thank you I will try this instead - Previously I was using standard 'live link' or 'Export and send current animation range as a Vrscene to chaos vantage' - I wasn't aware there was a live link animation tool

[rita_sobral]

vladimir.nedev I had a quick play with the tool you mention there are a few caveats to it though....

- Effectively this tool only works if you are using vray cameras or physical cameras from 3dsmax of which need to be animated from within 3ds max..
- From what im seeing when testing we cannot use scene states or vantage enrivroment settings - you are locked to settings coming from 3ds max/vray? Creating a new scene state and making sure thats selected from the render sequence panel that opens but upon rendering it starts rendering with a black background texture everytime and I have saved and updated the scene states multiple times so I think its a case of doesn't work in this tool.
- I noticed no difference in Vantage settings when using either one of these button below


So if we want to utitlise all of Vantage's really amazing features, camera's/timeline and scene states it is a requirement to export as a vrscene. Back to the original OP problem this means a handful of trees animated with 5 people from Anima can easily make a 10 second scene 80+gbs when compressed. Not to mention time to export the vrscene.

Are there any future improvements to animation workflow in the future? Or the fact that we rely on a vrscene make that extremely difficult?