How to render a mental Ray movie

[iceangel89]

I have modeled a scene, and managed to render a still mental ray image. But i want it to be a movie with mental ray features like global illumination etc. How do i do that? I am still a beginner. ;) Thanks ;)

[papa]

Set your in / out frames and then go to Render> Batch Render.

Batch will render your files based on your Render settings.

You might want to check out our Maya Basics kit which will get you up to speed faster than trying to piece things together on your own.

[laxman]

this video should also help you out:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/chit_chat/showthread.php?t=11&highlight=render

[Jak_Carver]

I have modeled a scene, and managed to render a still mental ray image. But i want it to be a movie with mental ray features like global illumination etc. How do i do that? I am still a beginner. ;) Thanks ;)


This is NOT an area a beginner should attempt to tackle. I repeat, this is a thousand times easier said then done. I can sit here and explain how to do it but honestly that will hurt you more than help you. Please learn the basic fundamentals of Mental Ray inside and out before attempting to animate a scene with FG, GI, or both. Unless you really dont mind the head twisting brain busting endeavor you are about to embark on.

[iceangel89]

Thanks for the very quick responce. But i have a problem: all the frames are the same! How can i fix that?

[danlefeb]

When you scrub your time slider in Maya, do you have animation?

[iceangel89]

Yup, there is but it dosen't seem smooth, laggy. But it is ok, in playblast. The only reason why i didn't use playblast is it is more of a screen shot type movie, no mental ray features, lousy texturing and lights. Or can i correct it?

[danlefeb]

No, a playblast is for previewing only - not rendering. Watch the video laxman mentioned and make sure your settings are correct.

[iceangel89]

ok. i am quite sure my settings are correct... i have reset tool, then changed to name#.ext. the other options are form the mental ray training kit. they rendered well for still pics. but in the video, there is an option for .avi, but in mine i don't get it, i am using maya 8. also the options for multi frame, as opposed to single frame is greyed out. is something wrong?

Just for info, my scene is a simulation for tablets dropping down a funnel into a bottle. so - tablet - active rigid body w/ gravity, funnel & bottle passive rigid bodies.

Also since playblast is alright, rendering a video should be alright too?

Just want to add, when scrubbing thru the time line, moving forward is all right, but it freezes when i scrub backwards. is this someting wrong? i am thinking this might be because of lagging.

[danlefeb]

Scrubbing when you have dynamic animations isn't a good idea unless you have an extremely powerful workstation. It can cause freezing because Maya is trying to figure out the animations as you scrub it...if you want to get a better result, bake your dynamic animations and then you'll be able to scrub faster.

As for not seeing an option for .avi, are you on a Mac? If so, that's why. Mac's can't render AVIs. The alternative there would be an MOV.

[iceangel89]

i am on a windows actually. running maya 8. i was thinking that maybe mental ray features can't be rendered as avi. maybe its a bug. whatever it is i should be able to batch render properly, any reasons why all my batch rendered images are the same?

[danlefeb]

I never render directly out of Maya as an AVI so I had to check but yeah, it looks like mental ray doesn't render out AVIs. Its better practice to render out single frames anyway, that way if you have problems with a frame you can re-render just that one frame instead of having to re-render your whole animation.

Regarding the batch images being the same, I had similar issues a few years ago when I was running Maya on my 866 MHz, 128 MB RAM system. I know, its a crappy one - but I wanted to see how well it'd run PLE. :-) Anyway, anytime I ran into dynamics and heavy computations, it did that - where it'd render one frame and then it'd "stick" on that one frame. Try baking your animations so the system doesn't have to compute it at render time (always save a copy before you bake animations).

[iceangel89]

Err,... sorry ... how do u bake "dynamic" animations. but thanks. think you are right i am not running a powerful workstation. just a student learning maya.

[danlefeb]

Select your geometry that has a dynamic animation on it, then go to Edit > Keys > Bake Simulation. What it'll do is run through one time figuring out the dynamics of it, then bake it into actual keyframes so that from there on out, the computer doesn't have to figure it out each time.

[meannn]

I cannot see this thread > http://www.digitaltutors.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11&highlight=render