FCheck
 

I'm doing one of those basic Rendering Tutorial and at the end I'm kinda stuck.
After I used batch render to render my 48 frame to 48 single iff files. It said that after double click at the first iff file the FCheck window will pop up and then I will be able to watch my 2 seconds clip..........but after I double click at it, my computer alert that I dont have the right software to open it. Anyone knows where I can get FCheck.......could u plese tell me more about FCheck cos I have never heard of it....
Thank you all

FCheck is a utility that comes with Maya. If you're on a Windows box, you can find a shortcut in your start menu (in the Maya folder).

More than likely, the reason why it's saying you don't have the appropriate program when you double-click the file is that there is no application associated to it. Easy enough to fix, though. Right-click the file and choose "properties." Then just navigate the "opens with" area and find FCheck. Now, you should be able to double-click .iff files from now on and they will open with the utility. If you don't want to associate .iff files with the FCheck utility (automatically every time), you could also right-click on your first file and choosing "open with..." and just browse to the FCheck Utility.

You could also just open up FCheck by itself and choose File > Open Animation. Then, select the first .iff in your rendered sequence. It will load everything and playback the animation.

Thanks alot.man. I got it.
Do you know how to convert these iff files to an Avi or Mpeg clip? THanks again ;)

You could try rendering the frames in Targa or Tiff, and they can be recognized with AfterEffects, which in turn can output a finished AVI for you.

or there are some free programs that will convert the tiffs / targas for you their name escapes me at the moment...

Alan

You need some kind of video editing software that will allow you to import a series of images and output as an avi mpg or whatever. Do a search through the rendering forum and you'll find quite a few articles dealing with this. Here's one to start you off.

http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...&threadid=5525

You also might want to check out Mike's freebie render globals video tutorial as I think he demonstrates compiling the video using VideoMach, a free video editor.

I don't have Maya on this computer, but doesn't Maya allow you to batch render an AVI video sequence straight to AVI?

I thought for sure that at least 4.5 did?

Yea, it does. But its not compressed very good, if its compressed at all.

Then just use a video editor to compress it. Like VirtualDub.

It would probably take just as long either way.

(Is there a difference in render speed either way?)

it is not compressed and not meant for playback on a computer. but it can be converted in many apps if it is already in avi. this way you could use the free movie maker of winxp (this does not understand sequence of pictures). or use virtualdub that can understand sequence of pictures as well.