Computer Animation Arts

All years: Online rendering with Conductor is now available.  To use Conductor you will need to sign up and download a plugin for Maya (at home/this plugin is being added to the University computers). A video explaining how to sign up and use Conductor can be found here . Please make sure you familiarise yourself with the service before uploading any render tasks (mistakes = money). If anyone has any questions please contact me and I'll be happy to answer them or ask Conductor directly. If you are unsure or don't feel confident sending your work and want to have it checked, again contact me (or Simon) to double check before uploading. Please note: Conductor will give you 300 free credits to use (as part of your sign up). For that reason you won't see a credit card / payment input section until those credits run out. After that you will be able to pay under the 'Admin - Payment Information' tab in the online interface.

GarageFarm is a render farm first recommended to us by Phil, one that has proven extremely worth it for all those of us who have used it. The staff are helpful and approachable, as well as easy to access when you need help, all it takes is a single click of the speech bubble icon; there are staff on hand 24/7, so you don't need to fear if you need to render quickly in the middle of the night --which is pretty much an animator's rite of passage!-- and don't know what to do.  Even if a real person wasn't on hand, they have various video tutorials and a forum to help you find answers. Like any new software, figuring out how to set things up can be confusing at first, but once you know how to do it, it becomes really straightforward. In order to send off your renders you have to first create an account & download their Render Beamer , which is available for Mac and PC - once downloaded you can access this via Maya's new renderBeamer shelf.  Unfo...

So according to friends, colleagues and others I have spoken to, it seems that Ptex. texturing (texturing without the use of UV coordinates) is starting to catch on in a big way. Programs like Mari, that allow you to paint directly onto a model without creating UVs are fast becoming a preferred way to texture it seems. Personally, I still believe it is crucial to know why and how to properly lay out 'flat' UVs despite this new 'Per Face Painting' texture technology. for those of you who are unfamiliar with Ptex., find posted below, a video that will explain roughly what it is. My question is to anyone with actual hands on experience with this kind of thing. Will mental ray or the maya software, ever support this type of texture file for rendering? At the moment, every program other than autodesk suite (with the exception of mudbox) seems to be able to render these files, yet Maya's latest release only allows us to preview the textures in VP 2.0 After spending quite ...

I'm little confused about to how to render a sequence out I assumed we had to do it as a batch render but when i try this it only gives me one image still of each pass Can someone advise me how we are suppose to render out the sequence properly please many thanks Adam

Remember before you render out your movie- What is your output? Do you need to work with broadcast safe colours? (RGB values between 16 & 235) TIP: If you have added sound to AE to render out with your footage, make sure that the 'Audio output' box is ticked in the 'output module'. AE Render Out

Hi all, In the event that you are unable to render your scenes through Batch Render. This script should solve your problem! It's called RenderViewExtension and it adds extra functionality to the regular Render window and this includes RENDERING IMAGE SEQUENCES STRAIGHT FROM THE REGULAR RENDER VIEW. BYPASSING THE NEED FOR BATCH RENDER . This is especially useful if your scene seems to be rendering fine for a single still, but when it comes to actually rendering out your final sequence, Batch Render fails! Obviously there's probably limitations to this but it's very useful in the event of an emergency. Download it here for FREE: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/rendering/misc/c/renderview-extension Instructions are in the .zip but feel free to ask if you are unable to work it out yourself. :) Good Luck! :)

Hi Alan, I may have mentioned before that I tend to carry out my Maya tutorials on an older PC of mine (just for ease of use reasons really). Because of this, my graphics card is for lack of a better word 'Naff!'. If you get the time, would you be able to let me know how to render the 'old fashioned' way using the hardware render buffer, or point me in the direction of a decent guide (surprisingly difficult to find one online). Otherwise I'm sure I can render at Uni some time next week. Thanks in advance

I'm sure some Second years are planning use the power of Mental Ray to render off their group projects and fair play to you, its great. However, Mental Ray isn't always optimised to make full use of the PC's its rendering on. Check your CPU Usage via the Task Manager when Batch Rendering, if your only using 50% of CPU then you're perhaps not using the PC's CPU to it's full potential. Thus wasting your time and potentially wasting the time of people waiting to render on the PC you've taken up. Check out this link for a potential fix. http://mattgadient.com/2009/02/22/make-maya-2009-use-a-multi-core-cpu/ I'm sure Alan and other people experienced in mental ray can also offer further advice. If your rendering 1080p (even 720p) then you're a nut job and a very very annoying person, its completely and utterly pointless at this time in your career. Render PAL or 720p MAX if you really feel the need, that your work really justifies rendering in High def...