topic Re: how to render with stingray in Stingray Forum (Read Only)

how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:08:13 GMT

hello to all

I'm wondering how can I save image sequences for making video cutscenes etc

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:14:28 GMT

Stingray isn't ordinary renderer, it's a game engine. What exactly do you have in mind? If you want to make a real time cutscene you can use the animation editor inside the engine. Rendering a video is surely better done in Max or Maya.

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:24:41 GMT

Actually, it's a pretty standard feature in most game engines to render out image sequences direct from the engine. Useful for having pre-rendered cutscenes that match the look of your game, or if you want to use a game engine as a way to do fast pre-vis. I haven't yet seen how to do this in Stingray. One stop-gap measure for now would be use to capture software such as FRAPS, but ideally there would be a script or something to let you step through and render out a sequence in high resolution/quality.

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 13:25:53 GMT

I think stingray graphic is good enough for production rendering
anyway there are similar functionalities in every game engine

saving rendered images as image sequences per specified frame rate

such as 30 frame regardless of game fps

we can use them for making video cutscenes of game

given that we want the cutscene to have the best quality regardless of end user's hardware , making video of the cutsene is the solution
g

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 14:42:15 GMT

here is the unity script to capture images
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/ScreenshotMovie

having the ability to capture screenshot on runtime is pretty essential isn't it?
players can capture their desired shot

it is useful for debugging as well

when testers see something strange in the game they can capture and send the picture to developers

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 15:09:12 GMT

I was kind of disappointed that rendering to video was not a built-in feature of Stingray. This overview lists "Design Visualization" co-equal to"Game Development". I think that producing a walkthrough video would be a valuable feature for artists/architect hoping to show their work to clients. Not every prospective client is going want to install an executable on their machine.

The workaround is to record the action on the screen, of course, provided a suitable framerate can be achieved. UE4 Matinee can record at a specified framerate independent of the complexity of the animation.

For those thinking of screen capture, you should know that the NVIDIIA GFORCE Experiance tool has a recorder and there is also one built-in to Windows 10. (Win Key + G).

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 15:20:49 GMT

As a stopgap until there are scripts/code for this in Stingray, you can use kkapture to record your sequences offline at whatever framerate you want:

http://www.farbrausch.de/~fg/kkapture/

Here's a 64-bit build http://keyj.emphy.de/files/kkapture-bin.zip Note that this is a totally untrusted binary (but the sources for this 64-bit build are here apparently: http://keyj.emphy.de/files/kkapture-src.zip ) so you would be using this at your own risk. I've used kkapture in the past when I had to capture videos offline and it worked well, but that was a few years ago, back when I was using a 32-bit build.

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 15:21:53 GMT

the problem with screen captures is that , if your frame rate drops at , say 20 fps for a particular shot , your final video will lag on that shot

you need to have at least 30 fps all the time

but the point is , you are recording with highest quality , probably for some shots your graphic card isn't able to render at 30 fps

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 16:15:00 GMT

kkapture seams promising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJic_pxgI7E

in case somebody isn't familiar to custom resolution , you can set resolution more than your monitor supports

useful for screen capture

http://www.nvidia.com/object/custom_resolutions.html

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 16:36:47 GMT

sorry for typo "seems promising"

I'm new here please let me know how can I edit my posts

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 18:01:46 GMT

I appreciate the reference to kkapture. I does look like it might work; however, for me, this negates the most compelling advantage for Stingray--a professional development tool with tight integration with DCC Maya LT. I am reluctant to depend on a sketchy third-party solution in my pipeline to get output.

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 18:15:11 GMT

I'm sure it will be a real feature before too long. Actually, it should be possible to implement with just Lua scripting already, if my current (rather limited) knowledge of the API is correct. Just seems that nobody has done it yet.

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 18:40:52 GMT

I would like to be able to render still image sequences also. Or better yet .avi or .mp4.

Re: how to render with stingray

perssot — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 21:23:40 GMT

First of all, rest assured that this is definitely on our radar. Until there's better built-in support for frame-by-frame video capturing you might be interested looking into using Application.set_time_step_policy() .It allows you to set a fixed time step for the engine to make sure you do not miss any frames when framerate falls below your target when using an external video capturing program.

For example:

Application.set_time_step_policy("fixed", 30)

will force dt to always be 1/30 when updating simulation.

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 22:41:10 GMT

since I've never used screen capture program , I'm thinking about another possible issue

first

Application.set_time_step_policy("fixed", 30)

forces the game fps always being at 30 or under 30 fps , but can't increase frame rate it just can decrease it right???

but this is not the main issue

the main issue is , when frame rate falls below 30 fps , for example 15 fps , what happens to animations? animations should slow down as well , 2 times slower , but game engines don't slow down animations , they just ignore missing frames by default

the issue is not being at or under 30 fps , the issue is how can I make sure the engine will render all specified frames , 30fps as instance , and slow down everything when it falls under 30fps , including animation , physics , particles , etc

or by other words it needs to slow down time

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 22:44:20 GMT

A fixed time-step means that every simulation step happens with the same amount delta time. So if you have it set to "fixed" at 30fps, and your computer can't render or play the game at 30fps, the game will actually slow down as well (like old video games when there was too much stuff on screen). It won't have variable delta times for each update tick.

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 22:53:13 GMT

thanks

I didn't know that

but it is really weird the engine has not this functionality

how an architecture or animator is supposed to use the engine when he / she can't render with it , I expected a set of advanced rendering tool

Re: how to render with stingray

_robbs_ — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 00:32:44 GMT

I do understand what you're saying.

But think of it this way -- there are already other tools capable of producing videos of 3D architecture and animations with lovely renderings. The value of Stingray particularly in the architectural visualization space is to make it easier to create and share fully interactive experiences, with immersive VR. What's a better tool for communicating your unique vision as an architect or designer -- is it showing someone a pre-recorded video? Or is it by letting them walk around the building and experience it interactively in a context that's as close as possible to really being there?

That said, there are lots of ways to put the engine to use! And recording video is certainly a totally valid use case that we'd like to improve.

Re: how to render with stingray

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 01:03:00 GMT

Providing an interactive experience is appealing but requires the consumer to have a system that meets certain minimum requirements, trust that you are not infecting his machine and motivated enough to install the package (including the necessary libraries.). On the other hand, video can be distributed in a secure and highly portable manner resulting in less friction for the consumer.

In the future, WebGL will be a better solution for this use case. I hope the Stingray also has this technology on the roadmap.

Re: how to render with stingray

frank.delise — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 01:35:07 GMT

Yes, capturing frames is on our radar, I agree this is an important feature if you want to capture frames reliably, specially when you have under performing scenes and want to dial up the quality.

For now, I use the Story tool to create the camera movement \ animation \ events, set a pause at the beginning than capture the video. This doesnt help if you dont 30 fps to begin with, which a framecapture tool will help with.

I think a good first step will be for us to allow the user to pick a story, framerate, resolution, etc.. and record a series of images or video file.

However one benifit of using The Stingray Story tool as it is today is that you will get all the event audio that goes with it.

-Frank