Chaos Vantage+VRay Scatter+Anima People+LiveLink = Animation Woes!

[andew_forbes]

Hi All,
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I produce a lot of architectural animations that require lots of vegetation and lots of people. I use the Anima 4D people (which look great), and I also use a lot of VRay scattered vegetation.

But, I really struggle to get the animations to render.

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Currently I’m using Live Link to render the animations as I can see no other way when using Anima animated people. (Exporting to a VRScene would take way too long and the files would be way too big).

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Everything runs fine when I’m building out the scenes. I can throw a lot of VRay scattered foliage at Vantage and using the new upscaling feature I can get 80-100 FPS! which is amazing really.

The problem seems to be that when Vantage looks back to 3DS Max for the data for the next frame, the amount of VRay scattered foliage makes the 3Ds max scene crash after a few frames. (I’ve tested with and without the people, and with and without the foliage - and the vegetation appears to be the culprit).

There doesn’t seem to be any reason that the foliage needs to be updated every frame as it’s static - it’s just the Anima People that need to be updated. I just can’t get the scenes to render and I often revert back to static people - which means I can render direclty from the Vantage UI and does not cause any crashing. It’s a shame as the animations would look great if everything worked.

I guess my questions are:

Is there any way that Vantage could only retrieve data for the objects that are actually animated?

Has anyone got a better workflow for this kind of animation?

Is there anyway I can see how much resource is being taken up by each asset - so I can address the cuplrit in Max?​

Is there a better way of getting animated people to render through Vantage?

I’m hoping that now Chaos own AXYZ, and that Vantage is now a Premium product (thanks for that BTW ) that this kind of workflow will be ironed out.

SPECS:
CPU = i9-12900
32GB Ram
GPU = Quadro A4000 - 32GB
Drivers = 537.42
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[npg]

Does your vegetation use camera clipping? This would make it animated…

[andew_forbes]

Hi Nikola.

No, the camera clipping settings are off.

Do you think the “Update automatically” setting would make this happen? I’d never really seen these setting before if I’m honest!

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[npg]

It doesn’t sound like this should cause an update. I assume the vegetation object and the surface it is on do not change.

It is also possible that the re-export of the scattered vegetation is redundant (exporter bug) but we can only know for sure if we have a scene to test with. If you have a scene you can share you can submit it here with a link to this forum thread: https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[andew_forbes]

Correct, the geometry doesn’t change - so that shouldn’t casue an update in theory.

How would I need to package that up?

Just the 3Ds max scene? Or the Vantage config scene too?

[npg]

max file + textures (vrmeshes, etc.) Vantage file is probably not relevant for live link, but it won’t hurt to include it - it is small.

[andew_forbes]

Great thank you. I’ll get those packaged and sent over.

I will include the Vantage config file as, it’s probably worth noting that, I’m rendering from the Vantage scene animation timeline.

I’ve found that as long as I have a camera active in the 3ds max viewport that has no animation on it - vantage will use it’s own camera animation for the rendering process, but then look back to max for animated objects to update for the next frame… (I hope I’m making sense!)

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[npg]

Hm, yes, usually changes made in Vantage (e.g. camera) while live linked get overriden by Max, but if you use the render button in Max with a static camera it won’t export new camera data to override what Vantage has (while still exporting the rest of the scene)… It’s not really something intentional, but I guess if it works it works

[andew_forbes]

Yes, it did seem like a bit of a hack. But, it was the only way I could find to get Anima people animated in LiveLink but also using the Vantage created camera timeline.

I’ve sent those files over. Thanks for your help so far!

[rita_sobral]

@andew_forbes I am trying to do your hack to allow animation via Vantage timeline using live link but I cannot reproduce it. For the first frame it works but then when it loads in the second frame from 3ds Max it defaults to the home camera (the one in 3ds max)

I’ve found that as long as I have a camera active in the 3ds max viewport that has no animation on it

I set the main view in 3dsmax viewport to a camera which has no animation on it but maybe im not doing something else?

Thanks

[rita_sobral]

Don’t worry I worked it out. I had to unlock the camera from render settings and default the viewport to something other than a vray or physical camera. This hack works perfect! No longer need to export a huge vrscene!

[andew_forbes]

Brilliant!
I definitley think this workflow needs sorting out. I tried exporting to a vrscene but I would have been waiting for hours just for the export!

[luckett_jason_hotmail.com]

@andew_forbes the anima people are one of the many hurdles when animating through vantage using livelink with large scenes, camera clipping on the scatters another, also crashes mid animation, lastly corrupted render frames (that’s one a nice one!).

The only way I can reliably get it to work is to use the export and send the current animation as a .vrscene button, this will create a gigantic file size if you have deformable meshes. It’s also very slow, 3-6 hours for a 3000 frame animation for me.

My scene in Vantage is over 250 Gb with 180 moving anima characters, 6 moving fountains and 1 moving waterfall feature.

This hasn’t failed me yet, all the other ways have failed and are massively unreliable (for me).

Lastly make sure there aren’t any xrefs, minor speed increase.

Good luck,

Jason

[andew_forbes]

250Gb!!!

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[andew_forbes]

@luckett_jason_hotmail.com thanks for the advice. I did try to export to a vrscene but the rate it was going, yes it would have taken about 6 hours! But if you’re saying it’s more plain sailing from there, it might be worth the wait. Presumably once it’s in the vrscene it renders a lot more smoothly?

I love the anima stuff, and I also love Vantage, but this workflow is terrible. I dare say it’s worth the pain in for the freedom that Vantage gives.

I guess another way would be to import the animated camera from Vanatge into Max and render through V-Ray standalone, but that’s an awful experience too. I don’t know why i would use V-Ray at all at this point… it’s so slow compared to Vantage.

[luckett_jason_hotmail.com]

@andew_forbes yep the rate is very slow, alas it’s way more reliable with all the content you have, it’s painful but until the software gets more reliable under livelink then for me it’s all it has.

It would be good to have the option to send as a .vrscene with a bit more finesse, something along the lines of only sending layers over from within 3dsmax and not the whole file. With Unreal you can do this a bit easier with the datasmith plugin, although I’m testing this now and this isn’t plain sailing and sometimes misses objects.

Another problem once inside the Vantage .vrscene is the lack of easy editability of geometry and sub geometry. Also the outliner is a very basic considering you have thousands of items.

That being said it’s way better than sending the animations the old way through max and a render farm. Also the great team at Chaos improve it dramatically every update so you can be sure it’ll get better.

Cheers,

Jason

[rita_sobral]

@luckett_jason_hotmail.com I always had mixed expereinces with animated vrscenes, and just recently started doing things via live link using Vantage cameras… I find the latter much easier and you always have full control over your scene right up until render.

One big thing for me on animated vrscenes is any scatters which include animated objects do not export the animations via vrscene. Also I would find quite often my vrscene would be corrupted - sometimes having to export multiple times before one worked. The disk space required is also huge if you think about it even when its compressed… Also sometimes had broken frames on Anima people where their mesh would be morphed. And wouldnt notice until I rendered the animation…

Live link can add about 25% extra to the render time on some scenes as the frame loads can take up to 10s on large scenes. Also had a crash or two but lets be honest 3ds Max can just die sometimes for no reason. But I’m finding it better. I also export images frame by frame so can always pick up from where it left off if something happened overnight.