Can anyone explain to me why the create animated sequence (Make Preview) will often times freeze and get stuck on one frame even though the time is progressing? Quite often when I create my previews, it will progress to a certain point and the frame won’t progress and it will continue to create the same frame over and over even though the time slider is progressing through the animation. I’m using Max 2011 and 2012 but this has happened in 2009 and 2010. To fix it I have to keep a close eye on the sequence images and stop the preview to restart it at the point it stopped.

D.R.
3ds Max 2011
Autodesk Inventor & AutoCAD
HP xw8600 Workstation
Windows XP Pro 64Bit
Dual Intel Xeon 2.83 E5440 GHz
8.00 GB of Ram

Can you post a screenshot of the ‘Make preview’ dialog box perhaps?

I noticed you list your computer hardware, but I see no graphic-card there. Do you have that?

Old in animation - New in the rest!

I’m not sure how this is going to help but here you go.

D.R.
3ds Max 2011
Autodesk Inventor & AutoCAD
HP xw8600 Workstation
Windows XP Pro 64Bit
Dual Intel Xeon 2.83 E5440 GHz
8.00 GB of Ram

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I was thinking you had ‘custom range’ ticked instead of ‘active time segment’. And you have.
Not sure I understand your question correctly, but try that as a solution.

Old in animation - New in the rest!

What type of output are you using? It is set to Custom File.

My output is to jpg sequential. When I’m creating the images, it will sometimes create them to a certain frame and then it will keep creating the same frame over and over with the correct frame number. So I can put the images into my video editing software to check it out and the animation will stop at a point but the frames are still tracking along. It’s just tracking along with the same frame image. I have to go back to the Max file and start the preview from the frozen frame. Sometimes I have to go through this process multiple times to get a good preview. I don’t ever make a preview straight to video for the same reason you don’t render to video.

D.R.
3ds Max 2011
Autodesk Inventor & AutoCAD
HP xw8600 Workstation
Windows XP Pro 64Bit
Dual Intel Xeon 2.83 E5440 GHz
8.00 GB of Ram

That is indeed an odd one.  Have you considered just rendering the custom sequence from the point where it stops on to the end?  It would give you a work around, not a solution, to the problem.  Without knowing what all is in the scene it is really hard to say why it may be doing this.

Stephen

That’s what I have to do. I pick up the sequence from the stop point and then run it to the end. Sometimes it finishes with all of the correct frames and sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s weird that the time slider is still progressing in max but it is only creating images for one frame, the point that it stops, and it will continue creating that frame to the end.

D.R.
3ds Max 2011
Autodesk Inventor & AutoCAD
HP xw8600 Workstation
Windows XP Pro 64Bit
Dual Intel Xeon 2.83 E5440 GHz
8.00 GB of Ram

Do you include frame-numbers, so you’re sure it repeats the same frame? Is it always same number of frames it makes, no matter where you start?
Just for test. Try making an avi and see if it does the same.

Old in animation - New in the rest!

I have never had a problem with the AVI so that is what I use. It doesn’t even flip through the frames when you do that. Unless you really need the jpg’s try it, and use the “active time frame.”

3ds Max 9 thru 2013
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit OS SP1
Dual Intel® Xeon® 6 core X5650 @ 2.67GHz CPU 36GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 4000
450GB HDD (x3) and 2TB HDD

3ds Max 2012 Certified Professional Models to Motion

You know I have tried the avi option in the past but if it crashes before it finishes you lost all of the time it took to get there. Also I’ve had issues with the avi codecs with the video it creates. It does still run through the frames when creating the avi version and it takes just as long of the preview, at least on machine it does. Maybe it’s the file size that I’m trying to create the preview from. The scene I’m working with is only 168KB but it has allot of Xref Scenes in it. When I do a Archive of the Scene the ZIP File is 431 Megs, so the scene is pretty big.

D.R.
3ds Max 2011
Autodesk Inventor & AutoCAD
HP xw8600 Workstation
Windows XP Pro 64Bit
Dual Intel Xeon 2.83 E5440 GHz
8.00 GB of Ram