Camera Focal Length animation is not reflected

Vantage Issues
1

I am using Vantage v3.3.0 and having an issue regarding camera animation.

When a keyframe animation is set on the “Focal Length” parameter in Maya, that animation is not reflected at all during playback or rendering in Vantage.

Interestingly, the camera’s Transform (position and rotation) animation works perfectly and syncs correctly. Because only the Focal Length animation is ignored, I suspect this might be a bug.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could look into this and see if it can be fixed.

2

Hey @kou_hoshina ,

Are you using maya native camera or have you added the V-Ray Physical camera attribute to it when exporting? In my test animated focal length with a native camera without the V-Ray Physical camera attribute indeed does not animate in Vantage, however if I add the attribute it works. If you have added the V-Ray attribute then can you send us a sample scene to investigate?

Best regards,
Alexander

3

Hi Alexander,

Thank you for your quick test and the great workaround!

I tested adding the “Physical camera” attribute to the Maya native camera, and I can confirm that the Focal Length animation now works perfectly in Vantage.

However, I would still love to request that the Focal Length animate natively without requiring the V-Ray Physical camera attribute, for the following reasons:

  1. Consistency with Live Link: When using Live Link, the Focal Length animates perfectly in real-time, even if the camera does NOT have the V-Ray Physical camera attribute. It would be ideal if the exported file behaved the same way.
  2. Workflow efficiency: Many artists use Maya’s native cameras for quick setups, and having to manually add the V-Ray attribute to every camera just to get Focal Length animation to export can be a bottleneck.

Since Live Link is already capable of reading the native Focal Length animation, hopefully this is something that can be supported for the exported files as well.

Thank you again for your amazing support!

4

Hi @kou_hoshina

Yes, I have logged your request in our internal system under LAV-2975. We will try and add it for the next release.

Best regards,
Alexander