Vrscene Animation export issue on networked drives

[bruce_hart]

Hi all,
I posted this issue on the Vantage forums originally. Recently I tried to export out a 200 frame animation to Vantage 2.1 via a vrscene file. The animation was a simple camera movement with a few keyframes along a path. In Vantage the camera movement stopped after a couple of seconds, in spite of showing the correct time length in the scene animation bar. I thought this was a Vantage bug at first, but realised the problem was with the vrscene file export in 3DS Max. I noticed that the "creating frames" process would stop at about the 70 frame mark, which explained the camera stop. The scene had a bunch of Forest Pack items and proxy objects. All of these geometry items exported to Vantage just fine, but not all the animation frames.

In troubleshooting this issue, I tried the export again with all that entourage turned off, and all the 200 camera frames worked. That seemed to indicate that the scene was too heavy, or something along those lines. Next, I exported out the same scene with everything turned on to a local SSD drive, instead of the mapped network drive location I had been using. To my surprise, all 200 animation frames were created.

So the problem turned out to be an issue with exporting a vrscene to a mapped drive on our office server. This issue occurred using 3DS Max 2024.1, Windows 10 Enterprise, Vray 6 Update 1.2 (6.10.0

Cheers

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for posting. Are you able to export other scenes to vrscene successfully in the same location? Are you able to copy vrscene files in the location you are having issues with?

[bruce_hart]

Hi Vladimir
I've been doing a few more experiments with very simple scenes. From what I can tell - the problem lies with exporting a vrscene to a network location that contains Forest Pack objects. The scene I tested consists of a teapot scattered on a plane, and an animation range of say 200 frames. No heavy geometry, and no materials. The export will start and begin the "creating frames" process but will stop after about 50 frames with the error attached. Sometimes it will export to the same network location, overwriting the same file twice without problems, before throwing up the error on the third go. Writing the file to my local SSD drive works every time with the same scene (either writing a new file or overwriting an existing). When the writing to network fails, it won't necessarily be at the same create frame. Hope all this make sense.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi,

From what I can tell - the problem lies with exporting a vrscene to a network location that contains Forest Pack objects.

So other scenes that do not contain Forest Pack export in the same place with no issues, is that correct?


I made a test scene with a box scattered on a plane using Forest Pack.
I was able to export it on our network drive with no issues.
In my scene the translation is animated, probably you've done something else.
Please find attached my test scene so you could test it if you can.

[bruce_hart]

Hi Vladimir,
Thanks for the test file. I see you've animated movement of the scattered box. That movement does not export to Vantage in my tests. Does it work for you? Regardless of that, I've done some more tests and the camera animation frames export can fail in scenes with no Forest Pack objects - so my apologies for the red herring there. In your test scene the camera frames export can sometimes stop almost immediately, at say 10% or sometimes around 80% (network location). I deleted the Forest Pack Scatter and it still failed at around 40% in one test export. The point at which it stops is not consistent, however exporting the same scene to a local drive always works.

Just to be clear, In all of these test exports the complete scene geometry will export fine, just not all the animation frames. This may be something peculiar to my network setup, so sorry to waste your time here. At least by saving locally I know it can work OK.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, the scatter translation does not export to Vantage. For now not all properties of Chaos Scatter work with Vantage. We are working to upgrade this.

Just to be clear, In all of these test exports the complete scene geometry will export fine, just not all the animation frames.

Are you are able to export the whole animation range as seen in the 3ds Max's timeline.
There is also a setting for this in the vrscene exporter


From your last post I am left with the impression that you have issues with any vrscene you try to export. If this is the case there could be an anti-virus or other 3rd party system that is interfering with the export.

[bruce_hart]

Hi Vladimir
Yes the whole animation range will export, just not the entire camera animation movement. In regard to your comments about anti-virus software interfering - yes that could be possible. Thanks for your time troubleshooting the issue.