max2vrscene IFL issue

[red_earth]

Hello All,
We are exporting a scene from Max that has a BG image sequence using an IFL file. (Image File List)
It seems that when we export the scene to Vrscene, and load it to render on our Linux farm, when it tries to load the IFL I get this in the log

Preparing scene for frame...: 97.97% [ 0h 0m 0.5s] [ 0h 0m 0.0s est]
[2010/Oct/29|17:29:08] warning: Bitmap file "/lustre/sali/vray/textures/rdt_HDRenv_rndr_test_v004_rz.1001.ifl" failed to load: error in file format

resulting in a missing BG environment.

The file format structure being used in the IFL file is an image file name per line eg.
image001.jpg
image002.jpg
image003.jpg......


Is there an issue with using an IFL file for image sequences?
Vlado?
Thanks in advance for any insight to this.

[vlado]

V-Ray standalone does not recognize IFL files at present, so this will not work unfortunately (I've made a note to implement this).

If you only have this in a few places, you can modify the respective BitmapBuffer plugin in the .vrscene file manually - just set its frame_sequence parameter to 1 and set the file name to an actual image file (e.g. image001.jpg).

Best regards,
Vlado

[red_earth]

Vlado,
In the VrScene file (which is 800MB) I found the location of BitmapBuffer how ever I am not seeing where I would add "frame_sequence" parameter.

BitmapBuffer bitmap109 {
file="Y:\xxx-1008\rndrout\000\000\environment\HDRI_ENV_noSun\20 48x1024_hdr\xxx_HDRenv_rndr_test_v004_rz.1001.ifl" ;
}

[vlado]

Yep, just add it after the file=...; line. and change the file name to one of the files from the real sequence. If your sequence does not start from 0, you can also add a line frame_offset=...;

Best regards,
Vlado

[red_earth]

Excellent!
Works!
Vlado,
Is there a place where I could find answers like this in some documentation? Or is this developer knowledge only?

[vlado]

You can see the parameters of any V-Ray Standalone plugin using the "plgparams" tool; there is a general description of the .vrscene file format included in the documentation of V-Ray for Maya too.

Best regards,
Vlado

[carl_thor]

Hi,
Interesting topic!
if "frame_sequence" is used, are sequences also looping? if not, what parameter is used for looping. I have a sequence of 12 frames which I need to loop.


Cheers,
// C