ZBrushCentral

Timeline not rendering animation in BPR?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey folks,

Zbrush lurker here. I've been using 4R7 and have been stumped with this problem for a few days now. Here's the low down:

I have a timeline animation for panning around a sculpt I have made, and I wish to have it rendered out in BPR. Based on the Zbrush Doc for TimeLine: “If you wish to record a movie in Best Render or with BPR you will need to render first before Ctrl+Shift+clicking on the Time Cursor. Each frame will then be rendered until the animation is complete. Please keep in mind that depending on your settings, hardware and the complexity of the scene this can take quite a while.” (http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/movies/timeline/) However, I instead get a single frame rendered, and the same frame is repeatedly rendered for over a minute, and doesn’t move onto another frame in the animation to render.

My question is thus: Do I need to enable record within the ‘Movie’ menu? Should I enable record and play the timeline animation instead? (from my experience, it does not play the animation in BPR though, it would just be preview render). Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if I’m missing any key info.

Thank you all!

#2

You seem to be doing the right thing. Do you get a recording if you simply Ctrl+Shift+click - without doing a BPR first?

#3

@Marcus_civis: Yes I do. That renders just fine as a movie. It’s only when I have BPR done does it stall on the first frame and continuously renders that same frame.

#4

I don’t know why you should be having problems but try this macro. This records the TimeLine as a movie and renders with BPR at every frame.

To install, just save the file to the ZBrush 4R7\ZStartup\Macros\Misc\ folder and then press Macro>Reload All Macros. You should then have a new “TimeLine-BPR” button in the Macro>Macros>Misc sub-palette.

All you need to do is set up your TimeLine and any BPR settings then press the macro button. There’s no need to press BPR first or click on the TimeLine. For the Movie settings you should choose whether you want Doc or Window (probably Doc) and Large, Medium or Small. All the other settings should be left as they are. Note that if there’s already a recorded movie the new movie will be appended.

HTH,

#5

Hey Marcus,

Thank you very much for the useful macro! Just got home and initialized it and I can already tell it's successful since it's rendering each frame as we speak! Awesome! Thank you, thank you, thank you...

I’ll need to give back to the community some way! :lol:

All the best!

#6

No problem. :slight_smile: