saving anim in workspace

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saving anim in workspace // Visitor Area

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Post by Unregistered // Jul 27, 2008, 5:35am

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Can some one tell me how to save animation in workspace. The only options i seem to have when i click render to file is all still images like jpeg/bmp/png and others, there does not seem any option to save as avi or any thing else. Thanks.

Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 27, 2008, 10:23am

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TrueSpace saves out a sequence of stills that you can then encode into AVI using your video editing software. The reason you don't want to save straight to AVI is that it's like saving to JPG there's quality loss in the compression.


I recommend Sony Vegas for handling your video editing, but VirtualDub is a good free alternative:

http://www.virtualdub.org/

Post by kena // Jul 27, 2008, 10:43am

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Save all the frames in sequential pictures and use a program to joi9n them in an animation. There is no direct-to-file animation tools in Ts as of this time.

Post by mrbones // Jul 27, 2008, 10:58am

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Photolapse

http://home.hccnet.nl/s.vd.palen/photolapsedlc.html

http://home.hccnet.nl/s.vd.palen/


Is a great jpg frame put togetherer...

Post by TomG // Jul 28, 2008, 2:20am

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VirtualDub is also recommended by many


http://www.virtualdub.org/


Note that even with an offline renderer which can render to an animation format, rendering to separate frames is always recommended anyway. A forum search should uncover the discussions :) Basically if you get a power out or crash, an animation format is corrupt and you need to start from the beginning; separate frames you just begin where you left off. If you want to change part of an animation, say from frame 300 to 420 in a 3000 frame animation, you can just re-render those 120 frames and recomplile - with an animation format you either need to redo the whole thing, or start splitting it up in video editing software to keep 0 to 299 from the original, then the new 300 to 420, then the renaming 421 to 3000.


In general, always render to separate frames and composite into an animation format later.


HTH!

Tom

Post by Unregistered // Jul 29, 2008, 4:41am

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Thank all for the answers.

Post by aidanodr // Jul 30, 2008, 1:55pm

aidanodr
Total Posts: 90
Hi Guys,


In the Workspace so - when you wish to render an animation you use the RENDER TO FILE icon down far bottom right corner?


I notice when you do this it literally renders out a seq of images with the camera's, lights, skeletons and default backgrnd / floor visible. Do you need to turn the visibility for each off first? What if you wanted a transparent background animation?


Can one move over to Model View and render the animation via Lightworks at this point?


Aidan

Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 30, 2008, 7:53pm

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Widget visibility can be turned off in the widget aspect of the desktop panel in the Settings tab of the stack.

Post by notejam // Jul 30, 2008, 8:18pm

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Total Posts: 191
Widget visibility can be turned off in the widget aspect of the desktop panel in the Settings tab of the stack.


Jack, I am lost with your explanation. Please explain how one gets to the place where we can turn off the widgets? I know left clicking or right clicking usually brings up the panels for things, but it does not work on widgets for me.


In the settings tab of the stack? Where do I click to get at this tab?


Thanks,


Notejam, one more person that needs a widget on animations turned off in workspace. One way to get rid of the widget for a while is exit truespace and then return, and only click on the play animation icon in workspace.

Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 30, 2008, 8:27pm

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1.) Click the settings tab.
2.) Click the 3D View toolbar to make it active and bring up the "desktop" panel.
3.) Change the aspect on the desktop panel to "Widgets".

You can then toggle the visibility for the different kinds of widgets. Don't forget to turn them back on after you are done. ;)

13647

Post by notejam // Jul 30, 2008, 8:41pm

notejam
Total Posts: 191
Well, quite often I do want to save the animation directly to video instead of rendering seperate frams, as its very fast, and looks pretty good when done with camtasia, plus I can add voice or music as I do it, so its simple and quick to knock out fairly decent videos for youtube, etc.


It seems to me rendering to sequencial frames fills up the drive with lots of files to eventually be deleted? By rendering directly to video, there is only one file created, the video, which is another plus for direct video recording of animations. So Camtasia will give you that option, but you do need to get that widgit turned off, before you record the animation. That can be done by turn of/turn on truespace and only click on the play button of the animation, or use Jacks method.


Here is where you can get camtasia. It can record a window on your computer screen, or you can set it to record from any portion of the screen. It can record both audio and video in a file, and several video formats supported.




http://download.techsmith.com/camtasiastudio/enu/312/camtasiaf.exe

Register it here to get unlock key.

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/pcpls.asp

Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 30, 2008, 8:52pm

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I use CamStudio 2.0 for doing my screen caps since in Vista x64 Camtasia seems to interfere with TrueSpace and cause general problems.

The problem with the screen capture method is that you don't get accurate frame rates.

Deleting the files isn't a problem. The user just needs to make sure to save them into a new directory, so that it's simple to select them all for deleting.

I think adding support for AVI export on the realtime render would be useful especially if a lossless codec is included, since some video editing programs (Windows Movie Maker) don't allow for importing of sequential frames.

Post by notejam // Jul 30, 2008, 9:06pm

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Total Posts: 191
Jack, I did what you said, followed your 3 steps, but I get a different desktop panel than you, and no option to set widgets appears.

Any ideas whats the problem? My desktop panel shows the bridge option, which is missing on the panel you got.

Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 30, 2008, 9:28pm

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You need to click and hold where it says "default" and drag down to the "widget" aspect menu. That will change the panel.

Post by aidanodr // Jul 31, 2008, 1:27am

aidanodr
Total Posts: 90
Hi Jack,


Im afraid going over to the Widget settings for the D/top and unticking say camera, point lights DOES NOT work when I render to file, the camera and the point light "meshes" are still being "rendered".


I also asked another question previously -


Can one move over to Model View and render the animation via Lightworks at this point?


By this I mean does it do anything to the scene which has been setup in Workspace initially? Do the toolsets differ for animation between Workspace and Model area?


Aidan

Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 31, 2008, 1:36am

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Total Posts: 4062
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You can manually set each widget object (camera/light/etc) to invisible via it's Render Options panel and checking "invisible".

See this thread about rendering in model side:
http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=6032
TrueBlue's post with the render dialog shows how you can select Workspace keyframes to render from. Just be careful not to right click on any of the objects in the scene while in model side, since that will remove their skeletons, morphs, and physics.

Post by aidanodr // Jul 31, 2008, 1:56am

aidanodr
Total Posts: 90
Thanks Jack,


mmmm ... the more reason that somehow it is made possible that one can RENDER proper direct from Workspace via Lightworks OR Virtualight OR in fact the many nice open source render apps out there like INDIGO and SUNFLOW.


Their are occasions when one would want to render proper as opposed to jpg/png sequences which notejam eluded to.


Not everyone will want to go and buy VRAY for just this. I dont think HAVING Lightworks on the Workspace side would interfere with sales of VRAY to be honest. Render app choice can be a personal thing.


Why I was asking you about the FBX plugin over at that other thread is because I use MODO alot, as you know it doesnt have Character Animation tools ( yet ) - they encourage users to add MODO to the workflow with other apps. At the moment TS does not Support .MDD or FBX. Be that as it may I am campaigning over at the luxology forums for people to adopt TS for Char Anim etc:


http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=28073


Aidan

Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 31, 2008, 3:00am

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Once the plugin SDK gets released, users will be able to write exporters to other render engines, or integrate them in to TS. I'm planning to do that for Kerkythea soon as I get the FBX plugin done.

Thanks for th plug btw! :D

Oh yeah, and TS Collada does export skeletal animation and skin weights. Problem is that most importers don't import the animation data.

Post by notejam // Jul 31, 2008, 4:23am

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Total Posts: 191
Thanks Jack, I found it. There are two places in the panel labeled default, and Jack means the one on the dark horizontal panel bar.

Post by notejam // Jul 31, 2008, 4:27am

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Total Posts: 191
Jack means the default option in the dark horizontal bar. Not the second default on the panel which is lower on the panel.

Post by TomG // Jul 31, 2008, 4:43am

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"render proper as opposed to jpg/png sequences which notejam eluded to"


Hmm, rendering to an image sequence is the proper way :) The reason for it is not shortcomings with the renderer, this one gets discussed now and then


1. Power out after 5 hours and 55 minutes of an animation that takes 6 hours to render. Rendering straight to single video file - start again and take 6 hours to repeat the render. Single images - 5 minutes to start where you left off and finish the rest.


2. After 6 hours your render is finished, but the quality settings in the codec are making the colors banded and you need to raise the quality. Rendering straight to video file - repeat the 6 hour render with the new settings. Single images - simply re-encode your already rendered images using the new codec settings (Better yet, just re-encode a small number, or a particular problem area in the video where there is more smooth color required, and keep doing so with different codec settings until you get it looking good, making it fast and easy to experiment and get codec settings just right).


3. Your 6 hour render looks great, except for that one scene where the camera drifts a little. Render to one file - render the whole thing again with the adjustment (you could render just the problem area to another video, but then you need to slice the video files up to get them to match in a video editing package like Virtuadub anyway, and you'll be introducing two codec passes for more compression). Single images - just render the problem sequence, overwriting the old image files, and re-encode.


4. You want to add video filter effects - if rendered to a single video file, you'll be adding more compression to re-render with those effects from your video application. Multiple images, you can add those video effects at the time of encoding all the single images to video, meaning just one encoding pass.



Note that some things, eg 4, can be avoided if you render to a non-compressed video - but then you end up with just as much disk space used (or more) than if you rendered to single files. Having the extra files to delete (and btw I suggest NOT deleting them, it makes rework so much easier, eg someone at a later date wants a WMV version of your AVI, easy to re-encode without the time consuming re-render) is not really that much of a disadvantage compared to all the advantages it gets you.


HTH!

Tom

Post by notejam // Jul 31, 2008, 5:34am

notejam
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[QUOTE=aidanodr;73973]Hi Jack,


Im afraid going over to the Widget settings for the D/top and unticking say camera, point lights DOES NOT work when I render to file, the camera and the point light "meshes" are still being "rendered".


I think maybe if you recorded a keyframe when a widgit or camera mesh is showing, then its recorded in the animation , so you will have to find the keyframe it occured in, and replace that key frame? Just a thought, maybe we need to always record key frames without widgets/camera mesh showing?

Post by notejam // Jul 31, 2008, 6:01am

notejam
Total Posts: 191
[QUOTE=TomG;74029]"render proper as opposed to jpg/png sequences which notejam eluded to"


Hmm, rendering to an image sequence is the proper way :) The reason for it is not shortcomings with the renderer, this one gets discussed now and then


1. Power out after 5 hours and 55 minutes of an animation that takes 6 hours to render. Rendering straight to single video file - start again and take 6 hours to repeat the render. Single images - 5 minutes to start where you left off and finish the rest.



Thanks Tom for your detailed response on rendering verses record to video directly of animations.


I appreciated it. Guess I will be rendering some of the times from now on.


I do not make long animations and if ever did, I would do it in short animation clips, that would then be spliced together in a video editor, so it still would be easy to add effects to any clips, as video editors easily allow splitting of clips and one can zero in on the area to add an effect.

My animations are only about 3 minutes long or less, and recording direct to video only takes 3 minutes. I can then put that video file in an editor, and cut it into any segments I want, and add effects to any of those segments, and it only takes a very short time, minutes to do so.


So I do not see it as any more effort than compile from frames to add an effect. The main advantage of compile from frames rendered seems to be better rendering, and finer control, but that often is not needed by me. However if I wanted an audio effect to occur at an exact frame, then rendering from frames would appear to give the better control of getting the audio located in the exact right place, but there are ways around it with video editors.


However, if a person is fortunate enough to have a pro level video recorder or access to one, these usually allow insert of audio at an exact location, and do so without disturbing the video, so things do not always have to be done in the animation itself, as effects can even be added in the video recorder itself.


On the other hand, most computer program video editors also allow alignment of the audio with the video without disturbing the video, so its really not a problem for me as my editor allows it.


So "Proper way" I would say is what will work ok for you, but your way of working can be totally different from what I do and what is "Proper way" for me.


Anyway, maybe I will get more convinced of your way of doing it as I get into making more animations.

Post by TomG // Jul 31, 2008, 6:10am

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Total Posts: 3397
For the lights that insist on showing in real-time renders to disk, several possibilities. For infinites, since their location doesn't matter, just throw them below the ground for instance so they can't be seen.


For any types, just drop into the LE, go into the light, and under Object Render Attributes you can check Invisible. This makes it invisible while modeling too (can be handy) as well as invisible at render time. Also useful for making light sources invisible in a shared space where you don't want people to see them.


HTH!

Tom

Post by aidanodr // Jul 31, 2008, 9:53am

aidanodr
Total Posts: 90
Hi Guys and Tom,


I suppose I should not have used the word PROPER - maybe a better word would have been TRADITIONAL.


Currently with the Workspace Render to file then I assume one does not have any access to GI, Caustics and a load of Post proc features?


Cheers

Aidan

Post by TomG // Jul 31, 2008, 10:06am

TomG
Total Posts: 3397
Hi Aidan,


Traditional is a good word there I think, catches the meaning exactly :)


Currently real-time tech can't do caustics and GI - these require intensive math that takes a long time to calculate, so can't be done in real-time (well, it could, but then you're refresh rate will go to 1 frame per 3 minutes etc!). We'll have to see where things go with that, as I am sure these things will move to real-time in the future with further improvements to hardware, and to new research in rendering, etc.


Post process is included to some extent, since the bloom and glow is a post process (applied to the 2D image in the buffer after the image is calculated by the card). That's about it for now in terms of what post-process is available from the real-time renderer.


Note that is workspace real-time render to file. The workspace offline render to file (if you have V-Ray installed) will do those things.


HTH!

Tom
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