I’ve been trying to automate several rendering sequences using vantage_console.exe recently, and I think I’ve stumbled upon a bug regarding how camera names are parsed from .vrscene files.
Whenever I export a scene from 3ds Max and try to render it via command line, Vantage seems to internally rename the camera to "Original Camera". Because of this, passing the actual camera name or node name defined in 3ds Max causes the process to fail.
Here are the details and steps to reproduce:
Environment:
Vantage Version: v3.3.1 (build 4820191)
Host App: 3ds Max (V-Ray .vrscene export)
OS: Windows 10/11
CLI Executable:vantage_console.exe
Issue Description: Passing the camera name defined in 3ds Max (e.g., -camera="Camera001", -camera="Camera_0-5", or its node name Camera001@node_6) results in the following CLI error: ERROR: Specified camera "[camera_name]" not found!
However, if I replace the flag with -camera="Original Camera", the render launches and completes without any issues.
Steps to Reproduce:
Create a scene in 3ds Max with a camera named Camera001.
Export the scene as a .vrscene file.
Run the CLI command using the original camera name: "C:\Program Files\Chaos\Vantage\vantage_console.exe" -sceneFile="scene.vrscene" -camera="Camera001" ...(Result: ERROR: Specified camera "Camera001" not found!)
Run the same command replacing the camera flag with -camera="Original Camera": "C:\Program Files\Chaos\Vantage\vantage_console.exe" -sceneFile="scene.vrscene" -camera="Original Camera" ...(Result: Render proceeds successfully)
Expected Behavior: The CLI should recognize the camera name as defined in the source scene/.vrscene file instead of requiring the hardcoded "Original Camera" alias.
Has anyone else run into this when setting up CLI render scripts? Hope the team can take a look at this for future updates!
I’m getting the same error in my tests here using the provided steps. I suspect that this occurs because Vantage naturally interprets the last or single camera from the vrscene as Original Camera node. I will discuss with the devs how we can improve this workflow.
I also tried with a vrscene containing multiple cameras inside and the camera render selection from the CMD works fine for all cameras nodes/names except the last created one - that becomes Original Cam..
Thank you so much for the quick response and for confirming the issue!
That’s a very interesting detail regarding multiple cameras. This bug is currently a major blocker for us because we are developing an internal tool designed to automate multi-camera batch rendering via CLI. Having that last (or single) camera dynamically renamed to “Original Camera” breaks our automated pipeline, as we can’t reliably predict or pass camera names programmatically across different scenes.
Really appreciate you bringing this to the dev team’s attention. Looking forward to a fix or an improved workflow in a future update!
Hi,
I’m pretty sure you just need to make sure your viewport in 3dsmax is not set to any of the cameras when exporting the vrscene. Try setting the active viewport to perspective view. This makes the perspective view become the “original camera”, and Camera001, Camera002 and all the others should be available as intended.
This should work with both the scene name and “Original Camera” in 3.4.0 when it gets released.
Narbutas is probably right about the workaround until the fix arrives. The “original” camera is the one selected by V-Ray for rendering at export time.
I’m still having some problems with this approach because after the first frame, the camera resets to the top view for some reason… Probably a script error or something else.
I’ll make some test to find the better way to send all camera without errors
For now i’ll try to send each camera separatly using the name “Original camera” and wait for the update.