Shake's flipbook not working???

G

googalizer

Member
I'm not sure where to post this someone please point me in the right direction if this isn't it. anywho here's my question:

So I just picked up Shake 4. I also grabbed the Apple pro tranning book from peachpit for Shake 4. I'm only on chapter 3 so I don't know much about shake, but I do know how to read. I'm doing what the book says but something isn't working right.

I finish a composite and add a file out node. I render the fileout node to a flipbook, but the flipbook doesn't open. In the book it said that a small window will pop up with a monitor showing the clip as it's being rendered. But nothing happens. At first I thought that my new Mac pro was the bomb and it rendered so fast I didn't get a chance to see it but that's NOT the case. I click on the flipbook icon in the viewer and nothing happens. I right click the icon and choose the render options and nothing happens. I've gone through the node view and selected all of the nodes and tried the flipbook and still MY FLIPBOOK DOESN"T WORK. I don't even know if it's important to have the flipbook work cause I haven't seen what it does yet.

I'm reluctant to even continue with the next chapters cause I don't like skipping steps. Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Thanks
 
The flip book isn't vital persay, but I'd certainly not keep going until you get that sorted out. It is what you described basically. And once rendered you can get a nice little preview of what you've created (before having to do any large formal outputs).

What I would try doing is a google search about doing the necessary node for getting the flipbook. There might be some subtle thing that the APTS book missed perhaps or that you're just not picking up on from their wording. I'm still on the road here so I don't have access to all my Shake resources to better help you I'm afraid. And I've shifted to editing myself, I leave compositing to my friends who are actual compositors, so I'm a bit rusty with knowing Shake without the program infront of me.

I'll call around though and see if I can get a hold of someone, but hopefully someone else will be able to chime in quicker with a proper solution for you. Good luck.

cheers.
 
I'm not at my Mac right now, so this might not be exact, but when you choose to render the flipbook it defaults to rendering the first frame only. Make sure that you speficy a range by entering 1-100 for the first 100 frames, or 1-200, etc. Once the flipbook is rendered you can use the > key to begin playback.

EDIT TO ADD: And just to explain further, you don't have to have a FileOut node to render a flipbook. The flipbook will render the current node you have selected and anything above it in your tree.
 
Okay question, what command(s) precisely are you using in order to try and get the flip book to view? Are you using the 'Render Disk Flipbook'?

Also, do you have any fancy video card you're using in your system? I recall issues with Shake and like BMD and Kona cards.

cheers.
 
Wow thanks for the quick responses!

I'll try all of your suggestions.

and to answer your questions:

I only did the exact commands in the book to view the flipbook. I read and reread it to make sure i wasn't missing something. I click the flipbook icon on the viewer. That's all the book said I need to do. it should then render and I could play the video. I also tried rightclicking it and to show the render options. The book said to do that step but, that the render options are fine the way they were for that particular exercise. So I didn't change anything and chose render but nothing. I'm at work now but I think I remember a picture in the traning book of the render screen that pops up if you right click and I looked closly to see if the options were the same as mine and they were. I just don't know.

And as far as my G-card I have the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT 256 MB SDRAM.

Is the flipbook a window that should pop up and have a different look than the normal shake layout. Because I can hit the ">" and it'll play the video. It just plays it in the viewer nothing pops up. Also the spacebar doesn't stop playback like the book said it does in the flipbook. So I"m sure it isn't working right.

Thanks again guys I'll go home and try your suggenstions right away.
 
I don't recall the flipbook icon button (maybe new since the last version of Shake I used, maybe I just never used it at all even though it was there, can't recall). Try the menus and look for the Render Disk Flipbook option. See if that perhaps works.

Your video card isn't a problem for Shake then. It was BMD and Kona ones that were showing issues w/ Shake 4. So you should be fine in that regard.

As for the flipbook, it is as you described at the beginning (so I assume as the book describes). It will be a small window that will popup on the screen. It won't be a contained part of the Shake interface, it should be 'ontop' of everything else.

cheers.
 
krestofre is right -
it sounds most likely that your globals are not set.
I also think at chapter 3 you are not rendering via the file out option of the actual node - you want to be using the icon.
click on that icon and check you have more than one frame to render.

PM me your page no. - I have the manual and can help you out.
 
Hi, I found this thread because I'm also at the end of Chapter three, and having problems rendering a Disk Flipbook. Whenever i click Render Disk Flipbook, the Pre-Rendering bar comes up, once it has finished the Shake quicktime viewer just disappears and everything goes back to how it was.
How do i watch/save the quicktime movie?
 
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