Rendering scenes with multiple camera workflow

[wreliford]

What is the best workflow when working with scenes with multiple overlapping cameras? Some cameras have different angles on the scene but only using a portion of the frame count. 

For example: camera_001 is position at one angle for frames 001-100 while camera_002 is position at an opposite angle for frame 50-150. I may have other cameras with successive frame count covering different areas of the scene like:

camera_003 for frames 150-250

camera_004 for frames 250-400

camera_005 for frames 400-500

...and so on. 

When rendering, must I separate out each camera to its own scene? 

I know in the Rendering Panel you can chose your renderable camera, but this just for

There got to be a better way.

Thanks

William

[_sebastian_f]

first 2 options coming to my mind are:

1: create a batch file were you can tell maya exactly to render specific cameras for specific frames etc. (i.e. http://www.quilime.com/code/maya_render_bat )

2: create a "master" camera and create animated constraints (i.e. point, orient) to the other cams and render that one!

[wreliford]

Thanks Sebastian...I thought about that too. I guess what I really want to know is that do I have to break out the cameras in separate scenes especially if the cameras are over lapping in frames like camera001 render frames 100-250 and camera002 renders frames 150-300. 

I was thinking there must be a reason why you could pick and chose your renderable camera in the render panel. I thought it was because you can render both cameras simultaneously from just the one scene file.

I guess I was just hoping.

[_sebastian_f]

hi wreliford,

you dont have to break it up in different scenes for the above mentioned workflows. but for sure with overlapping frames you´ll have to take the batch file approach.

would be a nice feature to have frame ranges per camera, for now it will just render the different cams after each other but for the same frame range.

last but not least i forgot about the maybe most simple solution: put your whole scene in different renderlayers (one per cam) and create overrides for the renderable camera and the frame ranges!

[tony.su · Accepted solution]

Render from the command line using mental ray.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/Maya/file...

And this is an bat example file.

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\bin\Render.exe" -cam camera_001 -s 1 -e 50 C:\render\myfile.mb
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\bin\Render.exe" -cam camera_002 -s 51 -e 150 C:\render\myfile.mb
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\bin\Render.exe" -cam camera_003 -s 151 -e 250 C:\render\myfile.mb
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\bin\Render.exe" -cam camera_004 -s 251 -e 400 C:\render\myfile.mb
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2015\bin\Render.exe" -cam camera_005 -s 401 -e 500 C:\render\myfile.mb