MaxScript Release 0.40 Beta for MAX R2.5 (9/1/1998)
Copyright (c) 1998 by Borislav Petrov, Bobo's Rendert**ls.
SHORT DESCRIPTION
ROCK Renderer (RenderOnlyChangesKit
Renderer) is a free, scripted Automatic Region Rendering utility.
It speeds up rendering of static or partially animated cameras and user
views.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
RockR evaluates the changes in the rendered view between
frames and defines the optimal regions to render. It then renders and composes
these Delta regions to a single movie or sequential files. It will also
work with animated Cameras, but will speed up rendering only in the parts
of the animation where the camera does not move. Depending on the complexity
of the scene and the size of the changing regions, RockR can give you up
to twice the speed of the standard MAX renderer, sometimes even more. In
scenes with a fully animated camera, there will be almost no speed increase.
FEATURES
Beta 0.4 (9/1/98)
The [Get Path] button lets you select the path
to save files to. You must set a valid path before starting rendering,
or you will get a system error message.
You can also enter any valid path manually in the text field bellow.
The [Save Config.] button saves the current path
settings, the file name, the output size and file format into a small .INI
file in your C: root directory. Next time you launch RockR, these settings
are loaded and used as defaults.
The Prefix field is used to set the file name of the
output. It is used as the file name of a movie file or as the prefix for
numbered image sequences.
The [Save To Disk] button lets you toggle file
saving.
The drop-down list lets you select the file type - movie
or file sequence. The current settings adjusted in the MAX image file saving
dialog box will be used.
The [EVALUATE & RENDER] button starts the
rendering process. There will be verbose output in the MAXScript Listener
window describing what happens.
The "Use Last Evaluation" checkbox will be disabled
by default. It will become available after you have rendered a scene once.
If you keep all Rendering settings described bellow unchanged, it will
remain enabled. Chacking it will skip the Evaluation phase and go on straight
to the rendering. RockR cannot check any animation or viewport changes,
so you should be absolutely sure nothing changed since last Evaluation.
The "Render Settings" group lets you set the output
size and the region evaluation controls.
NOTE: RockR will set only
the file size of the output. The current Animation Segment is ALWAYS used
for rendering. Any other rendering settings are taken from the MAX's Renderer
Dialog.
The [GET Res.] and [SET Res.] buttons
will be available only if the MAXScript Extensions for MAX 2.5 are loaded.
If not, the two buttons will read [ NA ]. The GET button allows you to
get the current resolution settings of the MAX renderer into RockR. The
SET button puts the RockR resolution settings into the MAX Renderer settings
fields.
The Output Width and Height fields let you set
the file output size manually.
The "Evaluation Grid Size" control consists of
3 radio buttons - 10, 20 and 40.
These buttons set a scale value used to divide the output
size. This means that with setting of 20 and a resolution of 640x480, a
grid of 32x24 will be used to evaluate the frame changes - the rendering
output is divided into a grid of 32x24 rectangles, 20x20 pixels each. If
a single pixel of the final image changes within one of these rectangles,
the whole rectangle is included in the region rendering. The "10" setting
is thus the finer evaluation grid, but takes slightly longer to evaluate.
The "Safe%" is used to set an additional safety
region around the rendering region. The value is the relative percentage
of the Delta Width and Hight added to each side. You can change it in case
you get any artifacts while rendering.
The "Max" value limits the Safe% region to a
fixed number of pixels.
The [Region VFB] checkbutton activates the VFB
of the MAX Renderer - this way you can watch the regions that are actually
rendered. It is disabled by default. You should use the [Show Region]
option instead.
If you check the [List Ranges] button, the region
settings will be printed in the MAXScript Listener
The [Show Region] checkbutton is active by default.
It displays a red rectangle showing the actually rendered region. It is
drawn AFTER image saving and will not appear in the final rendering saved
to disk.
After rendering, a time report will be printed. It will
include the RockR rendering times, and in case of a non-camera view or
non-animated camera, also the estimated rendering time of the default Renderer
plus a speed factor in percent - this is the speed increase you got from
RockR.
When rendering an animated Camera view, RockR will switch
the view to Bounding Box display, because MAXScript cannot render camera
view regions, so the time slider has to be updated, and a Shaded view might
slow down the process in case of complex scenes. After the rendering, the
BBox mode will be toggled again. It is a nice idea to Disable the other
3 views when rendering a Camera with RockR.
