LW only rendering 2nd half of RTV?

[mgrusin]

I hope someone's hanging around here (hello? hello? hello?)

I recently ran into a strange problem with LW Express in VT3 (update 3), anyone see anything like this?

When rendering out a ~500 frame animation to RTV format, I only get the second half of the animation in the resulting file.

I AM entering the correct first and last frames in the rendering settings.

I am NOT seeing VT's "chop off a second at the begining and end" feature (I have that set to zero in prefs, and have streched out the I&O of the clip in VT-Edit to be sure).

When I set it to render 10 frames, I get all 10 frames.

AFAICT the .RTV file is not corrupt, it just doesn't have all the frames in it.

When I render to a different format (like uncompressed AVI), I DO get all the frames (but it doesn't look great, like a low color depth with lots of mach banding?).

This feels to me like its running out of temp space while building the .RTV, but ? I am rendering to my video array which has 80GB free. My system drive has ~10GB free. I have 1GB of RAM and don't think I'm running out of physical or virtual memory during the render.

No weird plugins, the only image filter I'm using is gamma.

My objects and textures are on a networked drive.

I'm doing field rendering, but this shouldn't affect the frame numbering...?

Any ideas? This one has me stumped (and its hard to test because each render takes overnight...)

Thanks! -MG.

 

[bradl]

This is a know issue with the RTV plugin for LW. Do a search and you will see where a couple of us discuss this. The stock answer is "don't render to an animation but output RGB's... blaa blaa blaa" That is what you end up having to do, but if the RTV saver wasn't broken it would be nice to save a step and all that storage.

Sometimes it works for me sometimes it doesn't. You can run both (RTV and RGB) at the same time, in case the RTV bombs, then do a quick RTV export out of Aura or Mirage of the RGB's (I use TGA's mostly).

 

[Ted]

M.G., while I'm not smart enough on LightWave to have the answer you needed like the BradMeister did, I am VERY proud of the details you gave so others could help you.

I wish people around here would take lessons from you on seeking help.
If you don't give enough information, you'll waste several peoples time barking up the wrong tree and delay getting your problem, or issue resolved.
Nice Job!

Take note everyone. MG gets the star for today! Oh, and Brad too!

 

[mgrusin]

Brad: THANK YOU for the info! I feel MUCH better now (I tend to doubt my sanity when simple things aren't going right at 3AM). Sorry I missed it in my too-quick search, I'll look for those posts and try the single-frame method.

Ted: Thanks, I'm actually an old software developer, so I know how useless some bug reports can be. (Pause while I dig through old files... ah, here it is). Here's something I clipped from Usenet years ago that rang true for me (the aliens might get a kick out of it too):

> The example in perlfaq4 (How can I count the number
> of occurrences of a substring within a string?) at:
>
> http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/doc/manual/html/pod/perlfaq4/How_can_I_count_the_number_of_oc.html
>
> $string = "-9 55 48 -2 23 -76 4 14 -44";
> while ($string =~ /-\d+/g) { $count++ }
> print "There are $count negative numbers in the string";
>
> does not work for me.

In what way does it not work? Does it fail the syntax check? Does it print a diagnostic message? Is the message listed in the perldiag manpage? Does your code fail to compile? Does it run out of memory? Does it run out of disk space? Does it dump core? Does it compile but fail to run? Does it run but fail to print a message? Does it print a message but fail to print the right message? Does it print the right message but fail to print the correct number? Does it print the correct number but fail to stop printing? Does it print the correct message but fail to stop running? Does perl complain that it can't find the script? Does your shell complain that you've given it a Perl script to run? Does your program's output run into your shell prompt? Is it asleep, or just pining for the fjords? Do you wish it also told you the number of positive numbers? Do you wish it worked on numbers like -.5? Do you wish it didn't count -0? Do you wish it didn't count 1.23e-10? Do you wish it initialized $count? Do you wish it used local or lexical variables? Do you wish it printed the string? Does it let the magic smoke out of your computer chips? Does it run correctly from the shell but fail when run by a web browser? When it doesn't work, does it apply for benefits at the unemployment office? Does it march in front of the building, chanting catchy slogans and holding signs saying "Rahul is Unfair to Perl Code"?

It would be helpful if you could be just a little more specific about the way in which your code does not work. But it's my guess that you made some small error in entering the code, or in submitting it to perl. If that's not it, then try asking again. Hope this helps!

If I may, I'd like to pass on the gold star to everyone who populates this forum. Every time I've asked a question like the above, I've gotten a prompt and accurate response, whether it's from Newtek or one of the many MVP's out there. Thank you Brad and everyone else for all your help! You make VT much more than just hardware and software, you make it a real community.

Have a great weekend everyone! -MG.