Seperate Camera File

[StompinTom]

Hey,

Thinking of stuff that slows down working between Blender and Indigo, for a lot of my scenes it's been the re-exporting of the scene when just switching cameras for a different view. Even if it doesn't re-export meshes, it takes a long time for the rest of the stuff to be exported.

Could camera position, rotation, f-stop, exposure, etc. be put in a separate .IGS file that is included in the main scene file? That way you could have the option of just re-exporting camera settings?

[FakeShamus]

I had this same thought the other day. I think it would be very useful.

[ENSLAVER]

I don't really care for moving objects etc in a renderer, but moving a camera might be a nice addtion (taking the thread a little further)

[StompinTom]

I don't really care for moving objects etc in a renderer, but moving a camera might be a nice addtion (taking the thread a little further)

+1

Camera animation vs. full scene animation so that you don't have to export 3000 versions of an identical model.

Perhaps the environment information could be stored there as well?

[lycium]

If I'm not mistaken the exporters do this already? For example when I was editing ENSLAVER's pew pew laser beams scene, I was editing the camera settings in their own IGS file.

[StompinTom]

Hmmm... I only ever get one .IGS file with all the scene, render, camera and material settings and then all the mesh files in one folder. ENSLAVER maybe using a customized script?

[ENSLAVER]

I'm not sure how the exporters work for each app, but each scene from max does get a seperate $scene-camera.IGS along with geometry, scene, scatter, etc .IGS'. Even so, I doubt many average everyday users would want, or even know how to edit the camera file.

Exporting the same scene 10-30 times to get the right camera angle/position can be pretty painful, specially if the scene has thousands-millions of objects/polys (1-10 min per export?).

Perhaps it would be as simple as to have an exporter option "camera only".

In the end if it comes down to priorities/resources. Power/speed will always win over some some inflated "studio" package, but still it would be fun to run around your scene in a quake-like manner

[dougal2]

Blendigo does have the option to not re-export mesh data (the XM button), if you turn that off, then the export speed of scene settings, camera and materials will greatly increase.

I hear what you say about having additional scene files, and using <include>, I'll have a look at what would be practical to implement.

[FakeShamus]

clicking off the XM button does help with export time, but if you are doing heavy instancing, for example, it still takes a long time to write out all those <model> elements. having a separate camera .igs would speed up my workflow quite a bit.

[StompinTom]

clicking off the XM button does help with export time, but if you are doing heavy instancing, for example, it still takes a long time to write out all those <model> elements. having a separate camera .igs would speed up my workflow quite a bit.

Yep, that's exactly what I meant. Even with the XM button disabled, it still sometimes takes a while.