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iest_rob 1,671 posts
Im having a wee bit of trouble rendering Sprites. I've created an emitter, emitting sprites, and assigned 8 different images to the sprites to get a bit of variation. When i render them out with the Maya Hardware render, it renders the screen black - but when i go to the alpha channel, the sprites are definatly there - am I doing something seriously wrong, or do I need to tell Maya that these sprites needs to be rendered with some lights or anything on them (there are 4 lights already in the scene).
Thanks
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
I've spent the whole day looking through the internet for some tutorials on rendering Sprites, but I cant find anything at all. Does anyone know what could be causing this problem?
Ive run the Render Diagnosis - and this is what I get;
MAYA HARDWARE RENDER DIAGNOSTICS
Hardware
- CG fragment programability is not supported. Better image quality could be obtained with more advanced graphics hardware.
- Color Per Vertex (CPV) is not supported with this graphics hardware.
- Graphics hardware does not support accelerated multi-sampling.
Materials
- Plug wrapping_paper.specularRollOff is not supported.
- Plug Snow.specularRollOff is not supported.
- Plug snow2_v2:phong1.translucence is not supported.
- Plug Wall7.highlightSize is not supported.
- Plug blinn6.specularRollOff is not supported.
- Plug Alfred_Ref_BS_setup_01_dientes.specularRollOff is not supported.
- Plug Alfred_Ref_eyes_eyes_gocular.specularRollOff is not supported.
- Plug Alfred_Ref_eyes_eyes_pupila.specularRollOff is not supported.
- Plug Alfred_Ref_eyes_eyes_iris.specularRollOff is not supported.
Miscellaneous
- Volume rendering of envFogMaterial is unsupported.
- The auto render clipping planes on Anim_cameraShape are not supported. Use the viewClipPlane command to compute the clipping planes.
Is it my graphics card that's at fault?
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zachm 1,230 posts
I've never seen those diagnostics before, what kind of graphics card do you have? I don't see that being a problem unless you are using the motherboards onboard graphics and no graphics card. You said you have lights in the scene, did you tell the hardware renderer to include them?
if not, in the hardware render buffer, go to render-attributes, and then twirl down the render modes section and switch it to all lights. See if that works.
-Z
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
Hey Z - Yeah i've included the lights in the scene through the render attributes, but it's still doesnt want to do anything.
I've deleted all the lights, and chosen 'Default Lighting' within the Hardware Render attributes - and it renders out the sprites - but they're very faint in the background.
Im running a ATi Radeon X1600 Pro
Is there a way of making the Sprites bigger at all? I cant seem to find the option anyware.
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
OK - the problem contiunes from the After Effects thread I posted. - Just to recap, when i do a playblast, the particles flow nicely. Even when i go to the Hardware Render Buffer - hit render sequence - let that do it's thing, play it back in the the flipbook, and all great, still fine. But when i got to my Hardware Render and actually render out these particles, the particles just fly, you see them for about 2 frames max, it must be somehting within the Maya Hardware Render Globals - Ive treid to re-set the settings, but nothings happening.
Is there a way through the Hardware Render Buffer to physically render out particles with an alpha channel? I can render them out, but it's got a black background, and it's worthless to use over my animation.
Thanks again
-Iest
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
Been reading up on this - Ive managed to render out the particles from the Hardware Render Buffer as a .tga's - but there's no alpha channel. I've learned that Maya renders out an alpha channel into the Mask folder on the project directory. Ive gone into the 'mask' folder - and it's full of the mask files, but under the .IFF format - normaly AE imports .IFF files without a probelm - but now im having the following Error;
After Effects Error : the file format module could not parse the file
(45 : 35)
- any ideas what that means?
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hype 2,964 posts
that means the file is bad. is it opening in Maya, or Fcheck, or whatever that viewer thingy is called?
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
Hey - yeah its opening in Maya fine.
Is there a way in Maya to render out the mask to another format?
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zachm 1,230 posts
is there any chance you could post the maya file so that I could pick it apart? I could most likely figure out what is going on in a few minutes if I could see the settings and everything. If that's ok with you man.
-Z
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hype 2,964 posts
hmmm... sounds like its getting into zach territory... i don't know nuthin' bout maya.
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
Yeah sure man;
The scene's for Maya 7.0.
I'm rendering through the 'Anim_Camera', from Frames 0-622.
I've included the SnowMaker script im using, and the Source Images for the sprites as well - there are 8.
Thanks a lot man, hope you nail it!
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
Did you get the scene ok Z?
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zachm 1,230 posts
yeah man, i'll take a look at it around lunch today and let you know.
-Z
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
Excellent, cheers man.
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zachm 1,230 posts
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
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zachm 1,230 posts
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
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iest_rob 1,671 posts
