internal camera output

[Shimakaze]

Is there any way to hook up the output for a camera into a material so that at render time both cameras are calculated at once and lets you display what one camera "sees" on an object in the final animation?
To simplify the explanation a bit, it would be the same as if you were to create two cameras in the scene, render the animation from one, and then use the movie in the material (to make a TV screen for instance) But without saving the movie out first.
The reason I'm asking is because doing it that way doesn't work if the camera "sees itself". if it sees the screen it's on then it either doesn't see anything, or in the best case scenario sees the previous frame and not the current one. To make it work properly both cameras would have to be rendered at the same time. so is there any way to do that? or am I gonna have to give up and do it with a lag or in post?

[rdg]

I would do it in post.

Georg

[Da_elf]

last time i did that was in video post inside max. the animation was just a test that was 100 frames. so i created 100 jpg files of black background. then in video post the 1st render was of camera 1 and overwritting the pre-saved jpgs. the jpgs were used as an image sequence for a texture on a tv so when the second camera rendered the image displayed was what was rendered the 1st time

[Shimakaze]

Yea that's how I tried it too. but it only works if you can't see the tv from the camera you use to make the tv texture. Or you get lag (or blackness)
Oh well guess there's no better way to do it then. Post it is...

[Dynedain]

You could simply run it as two passes.

The first pass be the camera that will be on the TV. Then take that footage and apply it as a bitmap to the tv screen and render your main pass.

[Shimakaze]

Yea that's what using Video Post does, except it does it automatically per frame. Either way it doesn't work if the camera that is displayed on the TV sees the tv screen.