POV-Ray : Newsgroups : moray.win : Problems with AnimPlugin Server Time
29 Jul 2024 08:14:23 EDT (-0400)
  Problems with AnimPlugin (Message 1 to 5 of 5)  
From: Johannes Hubert
Subject: Problems with AnimPlugin
Date: 5 Apr 1999 14:24:13
Message: <3708f1bd.0@news.povray.org>
Hi!

When testing the AnimPlugin I ran into unexpected problems:

I took an old scene of mine (some large heightfields, otherwise only CSG of
standard-objects as available from inside of Moray, nothing fancy) where a
space-bug sits on a rock somewhere on a planet, with a building (sort of
planet-station) and a moon in the background.

My test was to animate the space-bug to fly from the landing-platform of the
station to its original position in the foreground.

I did so by defining three keyframes (within a 60 frames animation):

Frame 1: Bug on the platform
Frame 30: Bug halfway in the air
Frame 60: Bug at the resting position in the foreground

(BTW: Very easy to do, takes about 5min :-)

When "previewing" the animation in Moray by sliding the slider in the
Keyframe dialog by hand, everything looks fine.
However, when rendering (raytracing option) to an AVI file, some strange
(though very interesting effects) appear:

Already in the second frame, the glass-cupola that covers half of the
station vanishes. Continuously during all the frames the heightfields used
for the mountains and hills "slide" out of the picture (cool effect! ;-) and
about around frame 10-15 the part of the station that would be outside of
the glass-cupola (if that would still be there) simply vanishes, as if
"clipped by" the cupola.

Also around frame 34 or 35 Moray crashes and goes away :(

Note: The only object actually keyframed is the space-bug (a medium complex
CSG) and it seems to move correctly in the animation, despite of the other
objects behaving so strangely.

To illustrate the problems I will post the AVI (rendering stopped around
frame 30 before moray crashes) together with some still images in
povray.binaries.animations

The stills where shot by setting the slider in the Keyframe dialog to 1, 30
and 60 by hand, then rendering a still image with the Render->Render
command. As one can see, everything is fine in the stills: The cupola is
there, nothing is clipped, and the mountains did not move :-)

So long,
Johannes.


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From: Kyle
Subject: Re: Problems with AnimPlugin
Date: 5 Apr 1999 16:25:37
Message: <37090DEA.70A9782F@geocities.com>
That is incredibly strange.  The animation plugin has worked fine for
me, I haven't had any problems at all.  Have you tried it on another
computer?  Weird man, weird.
	
		Kyle


Johannes Hubert wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> When testing the AnimPlugin I ran into unexpected problems:
> 
> I took an old scene of mine (some large heightfields, otherwise only CSG of
> standard-objects as available from inside of Moray, nothing fancy) where a
> space-bug sits on a rock somewhere on a planet, with a building (sort of
> planet-station) and a moon in the background.
> 
> My test was to animate the space-bug to fly from the landing-platform of the
> station to its original position in the foreground.
> 
> I did so by defining three keyframes (within a 60 frames animation):
> 
> Frame 1: Bug on the platform
> Frame 30: Bug halfway in the air
> Frame 60: Bug at the resting position in the foreground
> 
> (BTW: Very easy to do, takes about 5min :-)
> 
> When "previewing" the animation in Moray by sliding the slider in the
> Keyframe dialog by hand, everything looks fine.
> However, when rendering (raytracing option) to an AVI file, some strange
> (though very interesting effects) appear:
> 
> Already in the second frame, the glass-cupola that covers half of the
> station vanishes. Continuously during all the frames the heightfields used
> for the mountains and hills "slide" out of the picture (cool effect! ;-) and
> about around frame 10-15 the part of the station that would be outside of
> the glass-cupola (if that would still be there) simply vanishes, as if
> "clipped by" the cupola.
> 
> Also around frame 34 or 35 Moray crashes and goes away :(
> 
> Note: The only object actually keyframed is the space-bug (a medium complex
> CSG) and it seems to move correctly in the animation, despite of the other
> objects behaving so strangely.
> 
> To illustrate the problems I will post the AVI (rendering stopped around
> frame 30 before moray crashes) together with some still images in
> povray.binaries.animations
> 
> The stills where shot by setting the slider in the Keyframe dialog to 1, 30
> and 60 by hand, then rendering a still image with the Render->Render
> command. As one can see, everything is fine in the stills: The cupola is
> there, nothing is clipped, and the mountains did not move :-)
> 
> So long,
> Johannes.


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From: Scott McDonald
Subject: Re: Problems with AnimPlugin
Date: 5 Apr 1999 18:01:23
Message: <370924B8.A20C8015@metrolink.com>
<snip>
I had similar problems, my solution was to delete all the frames (set
the count to 0) and start over.
-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Colin Scott McDonald                                  Metro Link, Inc.|
|                veni, vici, volo in dominum redirre                   |
|sco### [at] metrolinkcom                                  www.metrolink.com|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+


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From: Johannes Hubert
Subject: Re: Problems with AnimPlugin
Date: 6 Apr 1999 03:23:10
Message: <3709a84e.0@news.povray.org>
Scott McDonald wrote in message <370924B8.A20C8015@metrolink.com>...
><snip>
>I had similar problems, my solution was to delete all the frames (set
>the count to 0) and start over.



I started over several times, although I never set the count to 0 in
between.

Actually I tried it two different ways:
At first, I created the animation backwards: That is, since the bug already
sits in its end position in the original model, I defined the keyframe 60
first, I then moved the bug into the halfway position and defined frame 30,
then I moved into the start position to define frame 1.
Later I figured that maybe this "backwards"-approach was the problem, so I
redid the whole thing properly with defining frames 1, 30 and 60 in that
order - with similar results.

BTW, did I mention that I only used translate, rotate and uniform scale on
the bug between the keyframes? Nothing fancy there either....

Johannes.


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From: Alexander Enzmann
Subject: Re: Problems with AnimPlugin
Date: 6 Apr 1999 08:39:11
Message: <3709F2AC.E727BDCC@mitre.org>
Maybe the LGM's vaporized part of your spaceship...

I'd appreciate a copy of the .mdl file that causes the problem/crash.  I
can run in the debugger and track down the problem.  [There's a reason
it says "beta" at the top of the docs...]

I tend to make pretty simple scenes to test specific aspects of the
code.  This means that I'll tend to miss interactions that happen in
other circumstances.  Comments, both good and bad, will help clean
things up.

Johannes Hubert wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> When testing the AnimPlugin I ran into unexpected problems:
> ...
> My test was to animate the space-bug to fly from the landing-platform of the
> station to its original position in the foreground.
> 
> I did so by defining three keyframes (within a 60 frames animation):
> 
> Frame 1: Bug on the platform
> Frame 30: Bug halfway in the air
> Frame 60: Bug at the resting position in the foreground
> 
> (BTW: Very easy to do, takes about 5min :-)

Sounds pretty straightforward.

> 
> When "previewing" the animation in Moray by sliding the slider in the
> Keyframe dialog by hand, everything looks fine.
> However, when rendering (raytracing option) to an AVI file, some strange
> (though very interesting effects) appear:

The preview really ought to match the rendered output.  However, due to
the way I manage the scene during the generation of the animation, there
are plenty of ways that it might not.  Especially for CSG'd objects (I
thought I'd cleaned that up - guess not.)

> 
> Already in the second frame, the glass-cupola that covers half of the
> station vanishes. Continuously during all the frames the heightfields used
> for the mountains and hills "slide" out of the picture (cool effect! ;-) and
> about around frame 10-15 the part of the station that would be outside of
> the glass-cupola (if that would still be there) simply vanishes, as if
> "clipped by" the cupola.
> 
> Also around frame 34 or 35 Moray crashes and goes away :(

That's very bad.  It probably means I'm trashing memory somewhere.  The
really distressing part is the rendering is being done in a separate
thread and shouldn't be able to crash Moray.

> The stills where shot by setting the slider in the Keyframe dialog to 1, 30
> and 60 by hand, then rendering a still image with the Render->Render
> command. As one can see, everything is fine in the stills: The cupola is
> there, nothing is clipped, and the mountains did not move :-)

Stills are actually generated in a slightly different way than the
animation.  The stills are generated by moving the objects within Moray,
then exporting the entire scene and rendering.

When animating, I export the entire scene, along with the keyframe
information.  Once everything is copied out of Moray, I use the keyframe
information to move the objects around.  There are many more places for
the animation process to go wrong.

Xander


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