Exporting Animation for Stand-in with Arnold

Note - hopefully I'll be able to update this with picutres or even a video, but for now here are text instructions.



Been working on this problem for a good few hours!! Not that intuative and the Solid angle website wasn't much help.

So... to export an animation for use with Arnold Stand-in's follow these steps.

1. - Open render settings (make sure Arnold is set as your current renderer)
2. - Under the "System" Tab there is a section called "Render Settings"
3. - Set the "Render Type" dropdown menu to "export ass"
4. - Open a "Render View" window in Maya
5. - Render your scene (Click the "Redo Previous Render" button, or use an alternative method [ie. select camera to render.])
6. - By default Arnold will create the .ass file in your data directory of the current project (I'm guessing it goes to your default one if there is no project set up)


NB. When you set to render make sure your frame range is set correctly as otherwise the .ass file won't be created properly.
the enabling of motion blur is also important if you plan to use it.



To Import an animated stand-in:
1. - Open the Arnold menu, go to "Stand in" > "Create" (ignore the option box for now
2. - Set the frame attribute to "=frame". Doing so will automatically create an expression to link this attribute with the scene's current frame.
3. - Make sure that Use Frame Extension is ticked on.
4. - Browse to the file you want to use. Remember that the .ass file outputs to the data director by default. Arnold will automatically recognise frame numbers, but it might also recognise a version number as a frame number so make sure you check this and enter the version number manually if you have one.