Mesh Export for animation

[organic]

Is there a 'reuse geometry' button or checkbox somewhere?

Or maybe I am doing something stupid? I am rendering a 200 frame animation, and when I press the Export Meshes button the exporter exports the geometry frame by frame, resulting in a .vrscene file of over 40GB. Surely this isn't the expected workflow?

I am doing something stupid, right?

The scene isn't hugely complex - surely I don't need a new hard drive for every image sequence


Thanks for any help and suggestions

[Akhenaten]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

No solution for you I'm afraid, but I have the same issue. In fact, apart from very simple scenes, I haven't been able to render an animation yet.

[organic]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

So, it is the expected behaviour for the exporter as it currently stands? If I want to animate a sequence I need a lot of disc space?

I guess it would take a bit longer, but can't it be set up to render one frame then discard the mesh data and re-export it for the next frame, or somehow reuse it? It seems very wasteful in terms of disc usage.

Perhaps I could try rendering it 50 frames at a time, then I might only need 20 or 30 GB of free space

[DanMarionette]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

I have also run into this issue and would greatly like to find a workable solution.
Organic, do any of your scenes geometry change over the course of the animation? If they are all static then you can set the renderer to image first, export the scene, then change it back to animation. V-Ray will do a "fly by" animation with just one export of the geometry.

The trouble I'm having is that I was hoping to have deformable meshes and even an armature driven character which would require them to be exported for each frame. I have noticed several problems trying to render animations with the first one being the Mesh Export slows over time as it does each frame. This was for a relatively small scene which already makes me doubt doing anything larger. I have also had today had Blender crash almost immediately on rendering a 100 frame animation with just a box twisting. I exported the meshes fine but every time I render it has been crashing.

I hope I don't come across as having a downer on this project, quite the opposite. The work done by Andrey so far is nothing short of stunning and the project as a whole is so close. Recently I've been reading about Cycles and even though it looks great I can't help but think, over here we have an 'industry proven' renderer that is banging on the Blender door! I'm afraid my development skills are lacking but I would like to help where I can with this project.

Thanks

[bdancer]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

If you don't have animated meshes: disable Animation, dIsable Exporter -> "Auto export meshes", export meshes for the first frame with "Export meshes" button, then enable Animation again and press Render.
This will export meshes for the first frame and all other data for the rest of the scene (camera movement, material stuff etc).

[elieli]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

Thanx, works great....
Lockely I've got walkthrough animation, otherwise would be a problem. While I tried to export animation to vray mesh - at 50 frame scene size was something like 6GB, so what would be at 250....?

[organic]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

Hello again.

Thanks bdancer and DanMarionette, that is the information I was looking for. I assumed it would be a button or a checkbox rather than a process.

The sequence is just a walkthrough animation with static, unchanging geometry.

[dddjef]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

Hello There,
Same remarks here. Exporting animation to vrscene is a very long process, one minute per frame for a 200 000 faces character, and my coreI7 is not working above 12 % . It's weird, beacaus I've read that the export process was multithreaded since 2.57.1 version.

An idea : I've read that a few renders (like arnold) will be compatible with Alembic scene description. I wonder if this can be a solution.

Any clue on this?
(I don't mind for the vrscene weight)

[bdancer]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

dddjef, are you using the custom build (https://github.com/bdancer/vb25/downloads)?

[dddjef]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

It was with your build on githubs. (the x86 x 64 windows)
I tried to reproduce with a simple scene, a suzanne head, subdivided iteration 3, I put two location keys on it. It works...
But when I replace location animation, with an armature animation (with a single bones), it is way longer. And it seems not to be multithreaded (proc 12 % on i7). It reproduce my issue.
I tried with an iteration 4 subdivision (approx 120 000 faces), and it crashes blender.

I join the blender file. Tell me if you need anything more.

Thanks

[bdancer]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

And it seems not to be multithreaded (proc 12 % on i7).

Multi-threaded here means that when you have a lot of objects their export will be divided between threads.
One mesh is exported in a singe thread.

[dddjef]

Re: Mesh Export for animation

Ok! Do you think it could be accelerated as other vray plugins ? Maybe by dividing faces between threads, I don't know.

And, in this file, when I add a subdivision, and I apply it, if I export animation, it crashes.

I don't ask you to actually change your code, I just wanna know if it is possible. I really appreciate what you've already done on your own time.