Vantage 1.4 Camera fixes?

[fixeighted]

Hi,

I thought there were some camera fixes in this release but now I can't be sure what was meant to come and what was not possible to do, so here is what I noticed:

Camera comes in as targeted, which I thought had been fixed...certainly wasn't happening with previous version latest.
No settings are transferred, so no focal length, focus distance or F#.
What it appears to do is the imported camera takes the settings seemingly randomly from one of the existing cameras in Max. Very weird indeed.
On an empty scene the camera still imports as targeted, but with default Vray camera settings, so absolutely nothing is exported apart from the transform animation.

No animated settings from Vantage are transferred.

Despite setting the import dialogue to only import an animated camera (all other options unchecked), that camera will still overwrite any other that is named the same (VantageCameraPath).

Again, this is all not using LiveLink, as that is the workflow here.

[vladimir.nedev]

Are you talking about the "Import changes from Vantage" functionality that we have in V-Ray for 3ds Max ?
It's not clear from your post, but it seems so.
We haven't made any changes to this in Vantage 1.4.0.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[fixeighted]

Sorry, I did try to make it as clear as I could.

I am not using LiveLink.
I've always only wanted to get a camera that is animated in Vantage to come into Max.
The camera has animated F#, focal length and focus distance.
This does not work.

Using LiveLink (even if I could on this project), this also does not work.

So basically, am I to understand that this is simply always the way it was intended to work, and that
cameras from Vantage can only ever have positional animation applied?


In addition to this, I also said that:

If I import one camera, then try to import another, then the second will overwrite the first, even though
the import options are set to not 'overwrite existing'.
This is easily solved by renaming them one by one, but I thought I would mention it as it is maybe not how it should be.

I also pointed out that importing a camera means losing literally ALL its settings such as F#, focal length etc.
This is easily solved by keeping a data sheet of all the values and manually entering them again in Max, which is the only way I will complete my work this time.

I can also mention incidentally, that when going from Max to Vantage the scene scale in Max breaks the F# values in Vantage.
I mentioned this in another post a while ago.
If Max is set to e.g. metres then F# in Vantage breaks and needs unreal values to compensate.

[vladimir.nedev]

I understand now, sorry for the troubles.
Looking at the code of the max script that imports the Vantage camera in 3ds Max, we implemented only importing a non-animated FOV and an animated camera position.
I guess all other camera parameters are left at their defaults.

We will log this and the other two issues - the "overwrite" and the F# one.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[fixeighted]

Really not a problem (well, only a little )....it is beta software and so I expect issues.
It has been awesome to work with, despite the non-functionality of some bits.
We've worked around those issues and so it's still a totally useable and (to repeat myself) a game-changer
for so many situations
We have pushed it and it broke a bit...shit happens - lessons learned

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Hi fixeighted,

If I import one camera, then try to import another, then the second will overwrite the first, even though the import options are set to not 'overwrite existing'.

In my tests when 'overwrite existing' is disabled a new camera with the same name is created and the previously imported one is not overwritten. Could you send a sample .max scene with a .vantage file to test what could be causing this?

If Max is set to e.g. metres then F# in Vantage breaks and needs unreal values to compensate.

Just to be clear, you are talking about importing a .vrscene in Vantage and not importing .vantage file in Max, right? F#, to my knowledge, is not scene scale dependent, so if there are differences in exposure F# shouldn't be the culprit. Scene dependent parameter is target/focus distance and it can have an exposure mismatch when in very small values. Can you please send a sample scene with issue because I am unable to reproduce it.

Best regards,
Alexander

[fixeighted]

Regarding the F# thing, yesterday I had a scene set up to test....it was not working as I described.
I tried multiple times over about an hour and every time the result was the same.
This morning with another clean scene it is inexplicably now working.
The only constant is that I recall it happening a few weeks ago also (posted), and again also it seemed to 'fix' itself. So I have no idea what caused it on both occasions.
Maybe a Max restart did it.

Here is a video of the import glitch https://vimeo.com/565646104/471d005af5

[Alexander.Atanasov]

Here is a video of the import glitch https://vimeo.com/565646104/471d005af5

I see, you were talking about the animated vantage camera, not the still camera. I have logged it in and will inform you when there is development on the matter.

Best regards,
Alexander

[fixeighted]

Hehe yes, always. We have no use for the static ones

[s.balabanov]

I'm adding link to the instructions for the script fixes here as well:
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...63#post1118363