Camera animation inside 3D Max Vs Chaos Vantage cameras

[fco3d]

Hello everyone,
So, I need to do an animation in Chaos vantage. This is not my first time; it is my third one, LOL.
Jokes aside, the way I worked last time, I placed lights and Cameras inside Vantage. But we (a team of three) had so many issues loading the scenes and transferring AXYZ anima people. After researching online, the common answer was to use the 3D Max direct link to render the animations.
My Questions.
- Using the 3D Max direct link, do we have to animate the cameras inside 3D Max?
- Lights also should be placed inside 3D Max?
- Do I have to save a Vantage file with that scene or each time I fire up from 3D Max Vantage will create a new file?

Your help is appreciated.
Francisco P.

[Luma3d]

Well...the way i do it is do everything in max minus the animated camera, unless it's a path where I have to turn the corner. Create a Anima project with multiple animations based on the shots I need to do.

Then use my max model as a master file. Load my Anima peeps for the sequence I need then export to a .vrscene and export the keyframes needed for the Anima sequence. Open the .vrscene in Vantage and create you cameras there. Yes, the vrscene files get big, but less of a headache when using livelink.

[fco3d]

Well...the way i do it is do everything in max minus the animated camera, unless it's a path where I have to turn the corner. Create a Anima project with multiple animations based on the shots I need to do.

Then use my max model as a master file. Load my Anima peeps for the sequence I need then export to a .vrscene and export the keyframes needed for the Anima sequence. Open the .vrscene in Vantage and create you cameras there. Yes, the vrscene files get big, but less of a headache when using livelink.

Thanks for the input.
So that is the way we did our last animation, but i guess the main difference is we were rendering on render nodes so the transfering or loading files was a pain. But for this new animation wi will work mostly locally, I have two machines with 4090 so that should do fine.
I remember having issues with Vantage loading the cameras or part of the scene when exported from Max, did you see the same issue?
It was very frustrating for us, we had everything, and then to open the same scene in a different machine, with everything networked, it just didn't load.

[Luma3d]

Really...we use oneDrive to store all of our projects, but didn't run into issues. I had s sequence where I had to link my camera to a path and it worked fine when I exported my vrscene file. The only hassle we ran into was when we had Anima peeps. It would take forever to export the vrscene file and they were large.

[fco3d]

Yea, the anima people is a hassle. that is why we were looking into a live link from 3D Max. But that has its limitations, so I guess we will try again with the export. Thanks for the input.

[Luma3d]

I was hoping that Chaos would incorporate a better workflow of anima peeps since they bought the company. Something similar to TM and D5.