vrscene -> use animation override bug?

[seq]

Hi everbody,

using Maya 2020.2 and Vray 4.3.002 we have exported some animated robots as a vrscene file and imported it via vrscene manager in our master scene. We want to start the 125 frames robot animation at frame 1225, so we set the Animation Start under "User Animation Override" to 1225, the length to 125, Offset 0 and Speed 1. As we want to loop the animation starting from frame 1225, we set the Animation type to Loop.

But Vray seems to ignore the the Animation start and plays the animation from frame 1000 (first frame of the scene). When we use Once instead of Loop, the animation starts at frame 1225.

Seems to be a bug or maybe we don't have understood the concept?

By the way the whole vrscene workflow is great, only the vrscene manager could be more user friendly.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Lars

[seq]

Anyone? Would be quite helpful. Thanks.

[hermit.crab]

The terminology in the animation overrides may be a bit confusing, indeed. The listed parameters affect the timeline within the .vrscene, rather than its host environment. Animation Start determines the frame from which the animation starts internally, so to speak; a value of 50 from an exported animation of 125 frames, would mean the animation will start at its 50th frame continuing on the basis of the Animation Length. The Animation Offset shifts where the 0 frame is within the .vrscene; a value of 75 would mean that the 0 in the timeframe is the 75th frame of the animation. This leaves 50 excess frames from the last loop, which will be at the start of the host environment timeline. At frame 50 the animation starts a new loop (from what I understand this is what is required).

[seq]

Thanks Aleksandar. Seems indeed that we have misunderstood the possibilities: So there is no way to set the start frame in the host environment timeline and loop the animation from that starting frame. Pity!

We thought we can do the following: Animate the robots in a separate scene from frame 1000 to 1125. Export as vrscene, import and shift the animation in the vrscene to the starting frame 1225 in the master scene (host environment timeline) and loop the animation from the frame 1225 endlessly. From frame 1000 to 1225 in the master scene the animation should stand still.

As a quick work around we will try to shift the animation in the Maya scene to 1225, set to post infinity cycle and export from 1000 till 2500. Seems that vrscene does a brilliant job compression the geometry.

Any other ideas are welcomed.

[waaazoo]

You could also reference your robot scene as .ma or .mb and shift and loop the keys once referenced.

[seq]

Thanks - you are right, that would be the obvious way. But referencing in Maya is no fun - especially with Render Layers. They always had f...ed up our projects. And vrscenes seems to render pretty amazing fast.