3dsmax; Camera Setup

Hello,



To define a camera in 3dsmax we usually set the viewport in the Render Dialog to the right camera and lock this setting.

Nevertheless deadline sends a render job using the viewport which was selected last. Any idea?



Regards,

Tim

Hi Tim,

The LOCK button was implemented in Max 1.0 and was never exposed to MAXScript, so I consider it a broken feature.



Using the lock is like begging for trouble because when enabled, no script can modify the render settings anymore. Also if the camera that was locked would get deleted, a completely different view would get locked instead of disabling the lock.



I personally discourage the use of the Lock button, even when not using Deadline.



In order to use the Submit Max To Deadline (SMTD) script, you HAVE to select the viewport you want to be rendered.



SMTD enumerates all cameras in the scene and sends their names as part of the job, including the one camera that is currently set in the active view (if any). This allows you to change the camera of the job later via the [3dsMaxX] tab in the Job Properties which shows a drop-down list of all cameras.



Since the Lock is, as mentioned above, not accessible to MAXScript, we cannot have knowledge of its state or the view that was locked.



Still, I was under the impression that when the Lock is engaged, the job would render the locked view no matter what (we had issues just last week where somebody locked a view in another office without knowing of its implications and we were getting the wrong output from scripted batch submissions).



In short, forget the Lock ever existed. It should have been either removed or exposed to MAXScript in the last 9 releases, but it appears to be too deeply embedded in ancient code to ever get fixed…





Regards,



Borislav “Bobo” Petrov

Technical Director VFX

Frantic Films Winnipeg

I see! Thanks!



Tim