animation converter for LS from MAX ???

[Miklos Dombi]

I am making movies implemented into the existing environment, with the help of Matchmover (Realviz).
The problem is, that Matchmover exports the animation path in .ms format, but I need it in LS's .la format, since I am still working with Lightscape...
Max can export LP format, but at the animation tab you cannot choose .la format, instead it exports as many LP file as many frames in your animation. Funny....

Does anyone know an animation converter from .ms to .la, or any workaround of this problem ?

[Jeff Mottle]

I've never heard of anythign like that and I'd be very surprised if such a thing existed.

[Ernest Burden III]

I've been thinking about this. What you end up with is a set of a thousand +/- files like anim0001.vw, anim0002.vw...like that?

I'm wondering if a commandline arguement can have an unlimited number of characters? Or is it limited to 256 characters per line? Because if its unlimited you COULD paste in the entire list of .vw files between the -svf and -evf switches. It would render them all not any differently than an animation .la file. I'm not a DOS batchfile wizard, but is it possible to insert an array in a commandline (like was done with BASIC)? Unless someone has a utility or better idea on convertiong the animation to Lightscape format, I would say you need advice from someone who is a master at DOS and the use of .bat files.

[Meher Thakker]

some text from the LS help file

"You can only import camera animation from a 3D Studio file. Lightscape uses Catmull-Rom cubic Bézier spline construction between provided position points. It linearly interpolates other information (field of view and target point). Lightscape does not currently support 3D Studio spline modifiers, such as bias and tension.
A single 3D Studio file can have several animation tracks. In such cases, Lightscape creates separate .la files, named filename1.la, filename2.la, and so on, where filename is the name of the 3D Studio file. You can only generate animation files with the stand-alone command line utility 3ds2lp. Animation information is ignored from within the Lightscape application. "

good luck,

MrCAD
www.mr-cad.com

[Ernest Burden III]

some text from the LS help file

Hey, you cheated. You didn't guess!

That sound promising!

[Mark Olson]

I have done the batch file method with lots of view files. There is a limit of characters in the batch command so I had to break the list up. I don't remember what the limit was.

mark

[Arnold Gallardo]

What about using Polytrans? It can export to .LP but I have no clue about REALVIZ/MATCHMOVER. I have used Polytrans for converting animations from one platform to another. Nowadays I also use KAydara's FBX format. Maybe you should look into getting the animation data into MAX/LW/MAYA then export as .FBX in in MAX?

Sory I am just thinking aloud there. I never had this situation happen to me.

[Miklos Dombi]

Hey guys,

thanks all for your help !

Mrcad pointed to the ultimate solution. which was actually on my desk...
... hm
it just works fine.

thanks again !

[yu nan]

I think thatyou can renderde you scence in the Lightscape first,then export the modle which was renderde already into the 3Dmax to do your moive.how do you think it?