What was the problem?

The audio team wanted .avi’s of work-in-progress animations so that they could start timing their work. Animation was busy making their animations not work-in-progress.

With files saved in a variety of visual states, batching through them was not possible.

What was the solution?

Make Preview Animations UI

Make Preview Animations offers a simple UI for making consistent preview files from a large number of files.

Max scene files are selected and the render resolution is set. If there are multiple animations within the scene file, the tool will use the Character Sequence Editor to know frame ranges and animation names.

For scenes that don’t have a camera, a preview camera rig can be imported and attached to an object in the scene. Alternatively, an existing camera name can be specified and the preview will be made from that view.

Lastly, the user picks an output path, presses the Make Previews button and heads to lunch.