How do you go about putting a range in the render frames box with a negative number? E.g., -100-100 (meaning render frame -100 to frame +100).

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James Kelly
fo co mo so

Click the Time Configuration icon at the bottom of the Max interface, next to the frame number window. You can enter negative numbers in the start animation section.

Max 2012
Windows 7 64 SP1

Be careful with negative frame numbers when rendering to a sequence of still image files.

When creating an IFL, the negative sign before the first integer is seen as a character, and not as an indicator of a negative number.

Rendered frames -100 to 100 of sequence Test gives:
Test0000 -> Test0100, and Test-001 -> Test-100.
You cannot load the frames into RAM Player as they are seen as two different sequences. One named Test, the other named Test-.
The other issue is the Test-001 -> Test-100 plays backward.
It is possible to assemble both sequences in Video Post, just invert the Start and End frames for the Test- sequence.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

Sorry guys, wasn’t clear in my description. I’m talking about putting negative numbers in the Frames field in the common Parameters rollout in the rendering dialog (and using a ‘file number base’ to make sure they’re all positive file names). Usually you can put something like this, “0-10, 20-50, 100,105” but there doesn’t seem to be a way to put negative numbers into any format that can be properly parsed.

Any thoughts.

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James Kelly
fo co mo so

It doesn’t look like you can James. Even a single frame “-20” causes a “This is not a valid frame number list” error when you click Render.
You can, however, use the Range (as opposed to the Frames) as they are normal Spinners and will go negative. Not quite what you wanted, but it does work.
I would imagine that this is a “wishlist” item ;)

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

That was my guess. Oh well. No huge deal, but it’s the kind of thing that when you need it, you’re probably is a hurry and don’t have time to figure out why it doesn’t work.

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James Kelly
fo co mo so

you have an animation that starts at -80 and you want your frame sequence to be frame_0001 instead of frame_-80?

Just write 81 in the file number base

Or if you want your sequence to go into the negative… say you have a sequence that starts at 0 and you want to it be -80, just write -80 in the box.

Does that answer your question?