setting up a render for "Append new FG points to file" ?

[rpmaguire]

With the "Append new FG points to file" setting,

Is there a way to have mental ray automatically create a new fg map file every 10 frames and then use that to append to?

There must be a way, otherwise I would have to manually re setup the render every 10 frames....

Thanks for the help,
-Ryan

[rpmaguire]

Another question I have is :

In the manual it says that "Append FG points to file" is useful for animations of small camera movements.

What would be considered small camera movements?

How small is small? , It dosen't really elaborate in the manual...

Thanks,
-Ryan

[Kzin]

why you need it every 10 frames?

what i did for a bigger project and cam ani only was to setup different fg only computation renderpasses, i think i had 10 with 10 different cameras, and let them render overnight (its so easy to setup and control, a dream). with this method i baked the whole indirect lighting of the scene. the first pass needs to use "override fg map" and all other set to "append". you need to create several camera views to capture all the scene areas you will see in your final animation (make the fov a bit bit bigger, zoom and pan a bit around, things like this). there is no need to define something rigid like "render every 10 frame" (what you can do in your rendersettings if you need it, also good for animation previews to check if everything is allright, with "append" for fg you have what you are looking for). but the easiest way is to prerender fg only with "append" of the scene elements you will see with your final rendercam.

[rpmaguire]

Thanks Kzin,

I didn't even think about that.
Multiple camera's appending to a single FG map. And the render passes makes it easy, just set it up and let it do its thing.
Great!

Thanks,
-Ryan