Hi, folks,

  Friendly Neighborhood Martok here with a few more tips to try and help alleviate some crash problems some folks (like myself...hahaha) have when trying to render out video projects.  This will likely be old hat to the more veteran artists here, so, as always, this is for the new people:

   First, consider the complexity of your scene.    Consider your assets in the scene: set pieces, characters, backgrounds with video animation.   Obviously, the more you have on-screen, or even just active, the more processing power seems to get taken up....or at least it seems to be in my case.

   If you are doing "on the spot" animations for your characters amidst a complex set, turn your surrounding set off.  If there is an on the set prop you need in order to gauge your characters' interactions, then of course, leave that piece on.    Turn things on and off in the scene manager at this point in the production.  This should allow you to more smoothly create your on the spot animations for your characters.   If things are still a bit too choppy, then you might have to make a separate project and work out the animations there, and import those animations to your characters when back on your set.

   When you feel you are ready to render your video, now is when you need to consider moment to moment asset activity.  If your characters are on the move through the set, be sure to turn off any assets that do not appear on camera at that moment.   For your "moment to moment" ons and offs for your assets, this time you need to use the Visibility on/off buttons in the Modify panel of your UI.  This is especially important if you have backgrounds that have video playback on them, and with characters that are not seen on camera.   If a character or asset goes off camera, turn the character/asset off in the Modify panel.  

    As an additional precaution, to make sure you don't have a lot of things turning on and off all at once, do multiple on/offs at a couple frames apart with each asset.   Turn an asset off, go a couple frames, turn another asset off, go another couple of frames, turn another character off....and so forth and so on  until you have only what you need for proceessing and rendering at the moment.

     If you are planning on rendering out a video that happens to be a few minutes long, and is consisted of very complex assets, you might have to render out smaller sections of the current running project rather than go whole hog.

    Once you have made all your final preparations, and have checked to make sure your playback is going generally the way you want (playback can still be choppy when doing checks) save your project.   Then, close iClone, and fire it back up.   Load up your project, and start rendering right then.   I have found, at least on my computer, that if I try to render out immediately after doing multiple playbacks or adjustments, even after I've saved, that my video renders tend to crash or iClone decides to stop responding if I don't close the app and then fire it back up, load the project, and start rendering from there.

     Again, these are just a few trial and error things I've found help me in my final render out process.   I'm sure a lot of this is a result of my computer.  Your actual mileage may vary.




"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112