animation software

# 1 30-05-2010 , 01:18 AM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

Ok, now Im getting close to finishing my Spitfire tut...what is the best software or at least a good one to animate it??? Maya only animates within Maya doesnt it?? Any help would be appreciated.

I have heard of After Effects???

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Quote

# 2 30-05-2010 , 02:47 AM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2004

Location: Chicago

Posts: 1,712

Animation is one of the things that Maya does best so there is not really any reason to go to another app to animate, however once you have your animation perfected in Maya i would not save the file as a movie format i.e AVI but render out an image sequence instead and use something like After effects or another app to create your movie file.
Incidentally although it is possible to do some animation in AE its not really an animation app but more a compositing platform with powerful effects tools for things like colour correction ect.

2 x Modeling Challenge Winner

Quote

# 3 30-05-2010 , 03:19 AM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

Thanks mate!!! I thought Maya did it but I read somwhere it wasnt made for that or some bulldust. I wasnt sure thats why I asked, it would be like buying a Ferrari and having a VW engine in it wouldnt it!!! bahahaha

Why not .AVI jsprogg?????

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Quote

# 4 30-05-2010 , 04:02 AM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Say you're rendering out a nice big avi and it takes ohhh, about a day and a half, and you're just getting to the end, and maya decides to crash. All you've got now is a corrupted unfinished avi.

So... render an image sequence and you lose at most a single frame.

Also, say you want to re-render a short segment. Just re-render the frames you want instead of the whole avi.

-stwert

Website - Blog - YouTube - Vimeo - Facebook - Twitter

-->How to Effectively Ask Questions on Forums<--

Quote

# 5 30-05-2010 , 05:19 AM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

ahhhhh the dreaded crash...LOL ok stwert not a problem. I havent got there yet, probably another week but I was hedging the bet before I arrived so to speak. Frames eh? sounds like a plan

Thanks to all

I will have some reading to do I think on the subject, it doesnt sound easy

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Quote

# 6 30-05-2010 , 01:37 PM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2004

Location: Chicago

Posts: 1,712

Maya is not very good at rendering out movie formats, its much safer to render an image sequence and more flexible as explained above .
IF you don't have another app to take you image sequence into you can download a free app called videomach which will allow you to make a movie clip from an image sequence.

2 x Modeling Challenge Winner

Quote

# 7 30-05-2010 , 09:13 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

VirtualDub is another free one. Handles maya .iff files, which is nice... I guess.

-stwert

Website - Blog - YouTube - Vimeo - Facebook - Twitter

-->How to Effectively Ask Questions on Forums<--

Quote

# 8 30-05-2010 , 09:51 PM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

yeh stwert I have seen that one thrown around somewhere in here before. I guess its free but things that are free arent always the best option. Still its only a hobby ATM so it wont hurt.

LOL I just re-read your 'day and a half' bit, by the sounds of it you have experienced drama from a great height with animation going sideways?

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Quote

# 9 30-05-2010 , 10:36 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Haha, no, luckily enough I stumbled on the wisdom of not using avis before any major projects. Just last night I set up a batch render to go overnight. I checked on it this morning, and it had only rendered 40 images, then the computer went to sleep. :headbang: Woke it up, and it continued where it had left off. Weird. Maybe not so lucky with an avi.

Don't know why it would go to sleep while rendering, and pause the rendering. Anyone know why that could be? Hasn't happened before. Win 7 x64.

-stwert

Website - Blog - YouTube - Vimeo - Facebook - Twitter

-->How to Effectively Ask Questions on Forums<--

Quote

# 10 30-05-2010 , 11:22 PM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

bahahahah g-man, he is the Win 7 spokesperson, g-man your thoughts on the problem. Its not an XP thing mate...LOL

Thats weird ture enough mate!!!! I would for now check the idle settings and set it to never hibernate. Is it a lappy or tower??? I have my lappy set to always on when plugged in otherwise mine does the same.

My PDA does the same thing when Im setting out roads, it goes to sleep because of inactivity on the touch screen, even while it is receiving GPS data updates!!!

cheers bullet

see if this helps at all stwert

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...e-disable.html

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Last edited by bullet1968; 30-05-2010 at 11:26 PM.

Quote

# 11 31-05-2010 , 12:44 AM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Thanks man, I did that this morning, but I don't want that to be the default setting, and I'll probably forget to set it next time I render. Just wondering if I can expect this to happen again, or if it was a weird fluke.

-stwert

Website - Blog - YouTube - Vimeo - Facebook - Twitter

-->How to Effectively Ask Questions on Forums<--

Quote

# 12 31-05-2010 , 01:57 AM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

ask legendofzombi (g-man) dude, he is the one who would know. I run XP, might be old but its safe and it works

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Quote

# 13 31-05-2010 , 02:40 PM

Moderator
Join Date: May 2005

Location: Manchester Uk

Posts: 6,300

XP's great. You can set up right click custom renders to run MR renders without maya being open.

Yeah always render as a series of files.

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

Quote

# 14 31-05-2010 , 06:06 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: May 2004

Location: Bowling Green. Kentucky U.S.A.

Posts: 810

Win 7 should go to sleep like that mate. Not sure what caused it.
As long as the CPU is engaged in some form of calculation and not at all idle, it shouldn't sleep on you.

Mine has all the default settings, and will not go to sleep unless the computer is totally idle for 10 minutes.
screen saver ( I have that fire desktop one) keeps it form going to sleep for me even. so that's a good question.
I'll dig around and see what i can come up with.

g-man

Follow My Business
On The Web!
Or
On Facebook!

Quote

# 15 31-05-2010 , 06:17 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Thanks for looking gman... like I said, this is the first time it happened, so I wonder if maybe the sleep timer went just as a frame finished and the CPU dropped? But that shouldn't do it... I'm puzzled myself.

One other time, I came home to find that the batch render had quit partway through. I was a windy day, and although the power hadn't gone out, I wondered if there might have been a brown out or something? Don't know if that would cause it... weird again. Seems that I should just keep tabs on my computer without any assumptions.

Sorry for the thread hijack...