I have been asked to render a number of watches with different colors and bracelet/straps. Counting the number of possible configurations and I get more than 500 images.
Is it possible to automate the setup process of these by the use of MaxScript?
So that I can simply press render and get one state /frame.
watch 01
Change material ID for material called watch 01 color 1-8
For every complete cylcle of ID change strap
For every complete cylcle of straps change watch
Is this the way to do this?
You could also do it as render passes. Brake it down into management peices, render passes for all the elements you need, and then color correct your diffuse pass to get the different colors you need.
This would work best if you don’t know what all the different colors are going to be until some later point.
Another option: If you just need to render still images. Just animate your color for frame 0, 1, 2, 3, etc… etc… and render your stills.
No need for states (creating them would be a waste of time, plus nobody knows what will happen with a Max file containing 500+ states).
Sounds like the perfect job for MAXScript – get materials from a library, assign to the necessary objects, change MatIDs if necessary, call the renderer, save the image and keep on looping. For changing objects, you can simply hide-unhide what is needed at any given stage.
Shouldn’t require more than 20 lines of code…
My initial idéa was to set keys for every frame so that I would end up with a 500 frame animation that in a way would be playable (not that it ever needed to be played) and then hit render.
In short all I need it to name my objects, materials and create a MaxScript that calls them all in order renders at it goes. But is it possible to activate Backburner. Since there will be lot’s of glossy reflections and probably quite long rendertimes. Using all of my PC’s would be a must.
All I need now it lo learn how to script.
Question is: can I netrender from script. If not what should I animate? Visibility?
Render the reflections pass once, and then render your diffuse pass for the different color. It should cut your render time down greatly.
I feel lika I’m about to enter a new workflow. So if I render to elements I’d still have to merge them in Combustion or PhotoShop. How would you go about automating that procedure?
My intent was to make the render ready for delivery without any work in post.
-Carl