OTOY Forums

Hi,

I have no idea how to switch between cameras/render with multiple camera angles other than to do the following as I am still learning both DS & OcDs plugin..

OK, so I have made a project with frames 0-272..

I have then saved each camera angle change as a different sequence/DUF as follows:


seq camera start/end frames
----------------------------------

seq-1 -cam 10 --0-83

seq-2 -cam 3 --84-136

seq-3 -cam 9 --137-150

seq-4 -cam 10 --151-215

seq-5 -cam 3 --216-230

seq-6 -cam 7 --231-272


I have changed the settings in OcDs animation tab so that the output settings (output dir, render camera and start/end frames) match the above information and resaved each project as a new DUF file called seq-1,seq-2 and so on.
Strangely, when I re open any of the new saved project files (seq-1,seq-2 etc) the settings that I entered in to the OcDs animation tab are NOT saved! Infact, the ONLY information that does seem to save is the Name prefix, image format and save path info!

IS this me getting something wrong again or is this a bug/error with Daz saving those settings to the DUF?

Thanks for reading

the from/to frames are taken from and correspond to the DS timeline range markers (the rather tiny triangles to the left and the right above the main timeline) - move them and you will see the changes in the plugin, or change the plugin settings, and you will see the markers move (if the timeline is visible of course).

means the time range is always controlled by DS or other animation plugins. from my experience the range setting is not recalled by DS or sometimes set to strange numbers (maybe this is because auf aniMate2 - i don't know).

to switch cameras (and render settings and environments) within a single animation, the cue list is the place to go
given you have a bunch of cameras in the scene which are individually keyframed (or static):

1 place your frame marker to any frame, and click "get current camera, render setting & environment" in the anim tab. you will see, that the dropdown boxes below just switch to whatever is currently active. you can of course also select cameras, etc. by hand - the dropdown boxes always have all cameras, render settings, ... currently available listed.

2 the button below this block says "frame X: add current setup to cue" where X is always the current frame number. note: you need to always add a cue point for frame 0 - cues can not start somewhere in the middle, thus if the cue list is still empty, the button will always read frame nbr. zero.

3 now add 1, 2, 3, ... cue points.

4 to edit a cue point, just click it in the list and you will see the 3 dropdown boxes for camera, ... update to the current cue setting (and the button below reads "... update current cue setup". so whatever you have selected now, if you click update, you will overwrite the current setup.

5 to delete a cue point, double click it (this will also set the 3 ddboxes to the entries of this cue point, so you can re-add it, if mistakenly deleted).

6 to activate the cue settings, tick the respective checkbox left above the list

7 if you now manually scrub the time marker over the timeline, you will notice that the 3 setup ddboxes will update to the cue settings (given they are different ), and the cue list will highlight the current entry.

per default, manually scrubbing won't send changes to octane, but as soon you start animation rendering, these settings will be recalled accordingly; if you like to see the changes wile scrubbing manually, just untick the 2nd checkbox. note: the default setting (ticked) should also change settings if you click play in DS - a bug recently introduced currently keeps it from doing that (so only unticked + manually scrubbing, or animation rendering in general will recall cue point settings for now).

if the cue list is deactivated, an animation will always render with the settings currently active in the 3 ddboxes - theses selections are also saved to the project. plus of course the cue list itself.

so, the bottom line: if you like to only switch camera angles, you can use the cue list to get exactly that without saving different versions of the scene. in addition, the cue list is also meant to help rendering image series, where you set up stuff from frame to frame but not necessarily animated. for animations you most probably won't change render settings and/or environments (usually cameras only), but for image series it might be handy to switch them also, to have different size/aspect ratio settings, other tonemappings, etc....

Wow,

I cant believe how much effort you put in to helping, Thank you SO much

I followed your instructions with success and started my animation rendering with camera switches. Sadly, I am still having the problem that I mentioned in a previous thread regarding alternate frames not fully rendering! Its like one frame renders with 2000 samples and then the next frame renders with literally 10 samples and the following renders at 2000 samples again (this goes on and on in a loop!)...

There is a video sample in the post I left you here: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=30224

orion_uk wrote:Sadly, I am still having the problem that I mentioned in a previous thread regarding alternate frames not fully rendering! Its like one frame renders with 2000 samples and then the next frame renders with literally 10 samples and the following renders at 2000 samples again (this goes on and on in a loop!)...

this is a feature called "grain", to simulate aged film... forgive me - i'm joking

i will look into that soon; already had that once in the closed beta, thought to have sorted it out - it's a timing problem which results in frames reported as finished to early. it would help to see what again may cause this, if you just pm me the .duf file (zipped please), so i can see the exact settings in place if this happens...

Lol.. cool, you added a new feature to the post precessing tool list, aged film..

I can finally throw my cine cam away and go HD



Sent PM as requested

UPDATE:

I am currently rendering a small test anim (on my desktop) using JPEGs for a sequence and (so far) they all seem to be rendering just fine
A PNG issue I believe !

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv-kNQYxWJc&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

I did get this error message below on my laptop, (clicking accept stops the rendering process) but we all know how reliable that computer is

NOPE !!!!

The Test project using JPEGs was fine as you could see but the project I am working on (the one I sent you the DUF for) still renders with the `film grain` effect

Something about the settings that I chose in my current project seems to have respawned that bug you spoke of during the closed beta

Sent you a couple of crash reports via PM, hope they help!

UPDATE: Please view my post with screen cap of another possible bug here: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 42#p133242

Thank you