Strange Maya rendering problem
 

hey guys

I'm having a strange problem with Maya2012:

I have two 600 animations. They have identical animation and render settings. (24fps, 1024x768)
>24fps set via the Animation Preferences
>resolution set via render settings, also set to render only from frame 1 to 600 on both

and yet... one comes out at 500Mb, lasting 20 seconds

the other one lasts 33 seconds, but essentially stops at the 20 second mark, with the last 13 seconds being the same frame.

basically: both are weird. File info marks their FPS at 29.

I have no clue what's wrong.

Also I'm a bit of a maya nublet (its been 3 years since I last worked with it) but I know enough to tell that this ain't right

Suggestions?

how are you compiling the rendered frames?

batch rendering in maya

so you rendering as images or an avi or something?

avi

I'm guessing that there's some fps setting that I might not have set right - but I have no idea what I'm missing

its best to render as image files for loads of reasons. go with tif or targa, it'll make no difference to you. then use something to compile them at 24fps (i assume your settings in maya are 24fps?). I'm pretty sure you can do this with quicktime. its file>import image sequence or something.
just curious but if you have two animations that are the same with the same render settings, why render it twice?

no no - its two different scenes

but ok, I guess that might be necessary

Never tried piecing animation together like that. Any good programs of it you can suggest?

oh ha. i thought that was a bit crazy. :s

i'd use quicktime, but someone else might know something better.

I don't think you can beat Quicktime Pro for the money vs the far more expensive programs and their learning curves.

Also, it's really recommended that you render out image sequences instead of an avi because if for some reason the rendering gets interrupted or something goes wrong, you have to start over, plus the huge file sizes.

You can also use VirtualDub to assemble your frames into a video, which is free.