Export Animation to Standalone

[Hesekiel2517]

Hey Paul,

now and then i try to export an animation to standalone. But often i cancel the progress because its really really slow. Sometimes i'm under the impression that the export progress is longer than the actual rendering. Also the resulting Files are really really huge.

Today i tried to export a 1500 Frame long Animation to Vray Standalone. It took 3 minutes and the file is not bigger than the Modo Scenefile.

Do you see a way to improve this? Thanks in advance!

[face_off]

Octane is exporting as an Alembic ABC file, which is what is taking all the time. Each vertex is stored in the ABC for each frame. I'm not sure there is much I can do about this - sorry. That only thing I can think if is a) write to an SSD, and b) remove all static items, and export those (as a single frame) to a separate ORBX, and merge the two ORBX files in the Standalone.

paul

[Hesekiel2517]

Hey Paul,

thank you for answering so quickly. I already use a very fast ssd, but even with small scenes its unusable slow. Wouldn't it be possible to treat the animated meshes like a replicator: Generate an animated point cache and the mesh and use them with the scatter node. I'm no programmer, but i hope there is a smarter option than to export every Point every Frame.

[face_off]

Wouldn't it be possible to treat the animated meshes like a replicator: Generate an animated point cache and the mesh and use them with the scatter node. I'm no programmer, but i hope there is a smarter option than to export every Point every Frame.

Using this approach would result in an mesh deformations being lost, so I don't think it would be a viable solution. There is no easy way for a plugin to know if the vertices of a mesh have changed between frames (other than comparing every vertex position). So the Octane API provides a function where the entire animation (every vertex of every frame) gets exported.

If the Replicator prototypes are not changing, you could try simply opening the Viewport, and then octane.showNodeGraph, and locate the Scatter node. If you copy that node into the clipboard, and then paste it into Octane Standalone. You will notice that the entire animated timeline will be loaded into Standalone, and as you scrub the timeline, the transforms in the scatter will change. Obviously this won't work unless there are the same number of transforms in the Scatter node for each time in the timeline.

Paul

[Hesekiel2517]

Hi Paul,

b) remove all static items, and export those (as a single frame) to a separate ORBX, and merge the two ORBX files in the Standalone.

I'm using this approach a lot and it's works fine (most of the time only the camera is animated and this reduces the export time from hours to seconds). It is tedious though. Would it be possible to automate this. So that the plugin separates the animated from the static objects, export them and merge them in the end?

Most of the time the save.Animation command is just useless, because the export times are ridiculous. There is a lot of promotion of RNDR at the moment, so i think it should be easier to export ready to render orbx files.

[Hesekiel2517]

Also i have another featurerequest

You can set up a render queue in Standalone to render multiple orbx files automatically with renderjobs. This is really useful if you have a lot of short shots to render and want to render them overnight. Setting this up is not difficult, but it would be very cool if this could be set up directly in modo.

So for example i have 10 shots stored in actions (don't know if this is the right place) with different frameranges and settings. There could be a command like "add to renderqueue" and "export renderqueue" to set up and generate the .orc file with everything already set up.

Since there is no feature like this in the plugin this would be really great.

[Hesekiel2517]

I'm in the middle of a project and again the octane.saveAnimation command takes more time than rendering. Exporting is so incredible slow. It's a very basic animation, but very heavy meshes. Would it be possible to have a checkbox on the mesh to set the mesh to a rigid or deforming object? So that the plugin doesn't need to export every single point every single frame and could just write the transforms?

[face_off]

I'm in the middle of a project and again the octane.saveAnimation command takes more time than rendering. Exporting is so incredible slow. It's a very basic animation, but very heavy meshes. Would it be possible to have a checkbox on the mesh to set the mesh to a rigid or deforming object? So that the plugin doesn't need to export every single point every single frame and could just write the transforms?

Which version of the plugin are you using please?

Paul

[Hesekiel2517]

Hey Paul,

thank you for answering so quickly! I use the most recent stable version. The Plugin is really great, but i often have the same issues:

Export Animation and no Distribution input on the Arealights. If these could be resolved, the plugin would be nearly perfect.

[face_off]

Hey Paul,

thank you for answering so quickly! I use the most recent stable version. The Plugin is really great, but i often have the same issues:

Export Animation and no Distribution input on the Arealights. If these could be resolved, the plugin would be nearly perfect.

I really need to know the version number please before I can provide answers to support questions.

Paul