Vantage and animation!

[harald_martinoff]

Hi.
The way I work, so far, with Vantage, is to export my scene from Max, then open it in Vantage and making images from moving objects in the scene in Vantage. So far no problem. It has made my workflow quicker and after the last update with water it has become even better. Then I was thinking..... lets animate things in Vantage, but I couldn't figure out if there is a way to set keyframes in the timeline in Vantage. Just wanted to check if I can animate an object and then see how the animated water goes. I m not that knowledgeable in Vantage, but do I need to be on live link to and animated things from Max or is there a way to make keyframes for animation object directly in Vantage?

Attached image is just to show the way I use the water from Vantage, and it works good. Not as good as the Phoenix waters, but still the customers are pleased!

Br

[kostadin.petkov]

Hello, Harald!

Animation in Vantage could be done using Scene States, you can see a quick video about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RblQlvLUrIg&t=1s The workflow is a bit different from what you are used to in 3ds Max.
As for the water, you can see, in the 2nd tab, that there is a "High Quality" checkbox, that improves the detail of the water (at the cost of performance).

Regards,
Kostadin

[kostadin.petkov]

Oh, I forgot:
With live link, you can have the Phoenix ocean set up the way you like it.
Just note that for the Vector mode to work, you need your displacement to be in Object Space, as Tanget space isn't supported yet.

[harald_martinoff]

Thanks Kostadin.

Yes, I have one done the Phoenix ocean and it works, but I do like the way the new Vantage water is working out really good.
Checked out your link and as I understands it, I can make different stages base on material, lightning and camera, but no object animation? That have to come from software like Max?

[kostadin.petkov]

You can have different position per-object as well on each scene state. If you want anything more complex, as far as I know, it has to come from the DCC currently.

About the water, can you tell me what it is that you are missing? It might be possible to us to add it. The Water Surface in Vantage is indeed based on the the one have in Phoenix so some stuff can be copied.
The main idea of the Water Surface is to be quick and easy to use, so we've tried to balance flexibility and ease of use.

[LeePuznowski]

Is there any disadvantage to staying in Max with live link to Vantage? Other than the extra resources being used by max, the connection between the 2 is pretty solid. Then you can still animate as usual in your DCC. Just curious as I usually only export vrscenes out for final rendering.

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi LeePuznowski,

As you said when working in Live Link you are using the software you are comfortable with and only using Vantage as a fast render. Another benefit is the "Render animation in Chaos Vantage" feature where you don't need to export a massive vrscene if you have a lot of animated geometry. Additionally there are some properties that do not get exported to a vrscene and/or are not supported as animation in Vantage(for example an animated Instancer). The downside is the extra resources needed for the host app of the Live Link to run.
The benefit of using Vantage as a standalone is to have access to the features available only in Vantage such as Scene States, Water object, quick camera animation setup, Render queue for cameras and the animation from Animation editor.

Best regards,
Alexander

[harald_martinoff]

I working on some big scenes, and I do find the Live link somewhat slowing everything down, but it has also become a habit to just export a vrscene and then fiddle with in Vantage, and I also do like the new water object. I m producing images on the fly and I often render out in parallel, Max / Vray, Vantage and Cloud at the same time, so the vrscene scene export makes Vantage available by it self and I can still render in Vray in Max.