3dsmax animation render for LG - how to?

#1

Hi,

I’m a 3dsmax artist and I’d like to display some of my models and animations on the Looking Glass.

I’ve been testing out the Model Importer that came with the package and it works great but I’d really like to build my own scene and have a proper studio lighting setup and all that.

Therefore I’ve been looking at Unity but I haven’t worked with Unity before and I’m wondering whether there isn’t a quicker way than learning a complete new package.

In the Library app I can see a demo video of a karate master… I think it’s called 4DViews Monk or something like that. So I’ve been wondering, can I render out my animations from 3dsmax in some kind of a special video format that LG would be able to read and display in 3D? Is there any documentation describing the process?

Thanks a lot!
David

#2

Hi David, I know we talked directly via email but wanted to post here as well for clarity for the rest of the community.

The 4DViews Monk is an app made in Unity, actually, with our SDK. 4DViews is a company that creates meshes from video streams that can then be placed in real-time rendering engines. To do renders and animations from something like 3ds Max is not an easy task and requires fairly deep integration. It seems like you’ve gotten something up and running by reading our docs (I’d imagine our C API docs were particularly helpful) and I’m excited to see the output of that!

#3

Hi Alex!

Thank you for your answer. In that case, rendering separate images and composing the quilts out of them really seems to be the easiest way.

Indeed! Exactly that document helped me set up the camera rig. Also this topic was very useful because there’s a formula on how to calculate the exact amount of the camera lens shift.

I copy it here in case that topic is not available in the future and somebody is looking for the information: (x/2)/(y*tan(fov/2))

This works when the focal point is at [0,0], x and y are camera coordinates (x is the horizontal position, y is the forward/backward position), and fov is the field of view.