3ds Max Submit a Multi-Camera job

Deadline
10

SMTDWorkflow_MultiCameraSubmit.zip (8.4 KB)

This is still WIP, but it should be mostly functional.

To install,

  • Download the zip
  • Unzip to your DeadlineRepository10\submission\3dsmax\Main\Workflows folder
  • Restart SMTD

Features and Usage

  • It will list all scene cameras and let you toggle a checkbox in front of each individually to enable submission.
  • Use the Check All and Invert buttons to mass-change the checked states.
  • Press the Update… button when you make changes to the scene like adding/deleting cameras, or changing the Render Setup dialog and scene time settings to refresh the ListView.
  • By default, all cameras will be rendered at the current Resolution with the current Time settings from the Render Setup dialog.
  • You can override the resolution of every camera individually. Currently, Image and Pixel Aspect are not exposed as overrides (TBD?)
  • You can override the time settings of every camera individually. Currently, only a single frame or a continuous range are supported. (Every Nth TBD?). You can use the buttons at the bottom of the rollout to quickly set one or more cameras to override with current slider time, current scene range, or current render range.
  • Note that if SMTD is set to render Tiles or Jigsaw in Single Frame mode, the Tiles tab setting will override user overrides or global Render Setup dialog settings and will always render the current slider time’s frame. The ListView will reflect that by showing “Tile Frame” or “Jigsaw Frame” followed by the current slider time.
  • The Render Output will always be taken from the Render Setup dialog, with the camera name inserted as defined by the tag normally used for “stereo camera” rendering. Note that Stereo Camera rendering is not supported when in this Workflow.
  • In addition, Batch Rendering and State Sets submissions are also not supported by this Workflow as they would conflict with it.
  • Most other functions of SMTD can be used with this Workflow, including Tile/Jigsaw Rendering, running Pre/Post Scripts, etc.
  • To allow for this level of SMTD features support, the Workflow will submit each camera with its own .MAX file, which makes the process slower with big scenes. The alternative would have been to save the scene once and submit new jobs with the same scene, only changing the camera in the JOB file. A “Fast Submission” mode without the Tiles/Jigsaw etc. support might be added in future updates.

More Feature Details

  • The color of the cameras in the ListView will be based on the overrides -
    • white (or black in light scheme) means both resolution and timing are taken from the Render Dialog.
    • green means the Resolution override is enabled
    • blue means the Range override is enabled
    • orange means both overrides are enabled
      image
  • You can right-click camera(s) in the ListView to get a context menu with options to select the camera(s) in the scene, copy and paste either the resolution or the time range via an internal “clipboard”, for example if you want to copy the custom resolution settings of one camera to one or more other cameras.
  • If multiple cameras are highlighted, the controls underneath the ListView will show the values of the last camera highlighted on the list. Entering a value in any of the spinners will change all highlighted cameras.
  • The Time Range Start and End values are set to bump each-other. If you try to enter a Start value greater than the End value, the End value will change to follow, and vice-versa. So if Start is 0 and End is 10 and you enter 20 in Start, both will change to 20. This works for interactive spinning of the values too.
  • The camera-specific settings are stored in the User Properties buffer of each camera. This means that if you merge a camera from one scene into another, the camera will bring over its Multi-Camera override settings with it.
  • The checked state of the cameras on the list is saved with the MAX scene file using the standard SMTD mechanism for storing Workflow settings. Re-opening SMTD in the scene should retain the checked state of any cameras that were tagged for submission.
  • Each job will have the same base name, with an additional tag containing the Camera name.
  • All jobs will be submitted under the same Batch title which will contain the job base name, the date and time of submission, and the tag [MULTI-CAMERA]. This includes any jobs generated by Tiles/Jigsaw features, Draft tile assembly jobs etc.

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Have fun and please report any and all issues, bugs and ideas for more features within this thread.

Once the code is deemed production-ready, we will consider it for inclusion in the shipping Deadline 10 builds.

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