Network render problem

[dayvbrown]

Hi all,

I have a job where there a number of screens floating about the place each playing a video (a single offset frame sequence). I'm offsetting the sequence in cops and calling them with the op:/ syntax into the shaders and when i render locally everything is fine but when i send it off to the farm it is only using the first frame of the sequence, ie: there is no video movement on the screens. Although I know i can bake (render from cops) out the adjusted sequences (or just render locally...) it's not really the ideal solution...

any help\ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Dave.

Edited October 29, 2008 by dayvbrown

[symek]

Hi all,

I have a job where there a number of screens floating about the place each playing a video (a single offset frame sequence). I'm offsetting the sequence in cops and calling them with the op:/ syntax into the shaders and when i render locally everything is fine but when i send it off to the farm it is only using the first frame of the sequence, ie: there is no video movement on the screens. Although I know i can bake (render from cops) out the adjusted sequences (or just render locally...) it's not really the ideal solution...

any help\ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Dave.

It looks like ifd generation doesn't trigger cops to refresh after frame changes, so in every ifd is the same texture. "op:/" syntax is not perfect anyway for rendering sequences, because you copy every texture into ifd making it rather big file. You could:

- fight for a refresh cops with opcook command in Mantra ROP pre-frame script (opcook /img/img1/mycop)

- try to adjust your sequences with expressions instead of cops, which is quite common habit:

/path/to/my/texture.`$F+20`.rat

or:

/path/to/my/texure.`padzero(4, 20+opdigit("."))`.rat

(slice texture with trailing node number)

or do another similar trick. Write more about adjustments you need and I' sure someone will give a recipe.

hth,

skk.

Edited October 28, 2008 by SYmek

[dayvbrown]

It looks like ifd generation doesn't trigger cops to refresh after frame changes, so in every ifd is the same texture. "op:/" syntax is not perfect anyway for rendering sequences, because you copy every texture into ifd making it rather big file. You could:

- fight for a refresh with opcook command in Mantra ROP pre-frame script

- try to adjust sequence with expression instead of cops, which is quite common habit:

/path/to/my/texture.`$F+20`.rat

or

/path/to/my/texure.`padzero(4, 20+opdigit("."))`.rat (slice texture with trailing node number)

or other similar trick. Write more about adjustments you need and I' sure someone will give a recipe.

hth,

skk.

Sweet thanks man that will work. Sounds like the ifd generation explanation makes sense as well, good to know.

I was using cops because i'm adding a few smaller disparate sequences together and randomizing them for this test but i'll be getting a single sequence for the final so the expression will work perfectly.

Thanks again,

Dave.