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meatpuppet
08-29-2005, 11:25 PM
our pipeline here is (basiclly) maya - mental ray - after effects. we recently upgraded to maya 7. now when i render out a mental ray iff sequence from maya and attempt to import it into after effects i get this:

After Effects error: Photoshop file format error 1
(45 :: 35)

i have a workaround, open the sequence in fcheck and resave the animation back out. then it import's fine. so i know that ae can open iff's (it should be able to, it did before...) but that extra step sucks.

so my question is, what the hell? is there some new setting in the mental ray render globals of maya? why can't after effects read a 'raw' render file but it can read one that's been saved from fcheck? (and, as far as i know, is bit-for-bit identical).

perhaps this is a maya issue (i guess that's part of my question, heh) ... i'll post this there as well at the risk of offending Those Who Moderate.

thanks,
caco
01-06-2006, 07:26 PM
Anybody find a workaround for this? Other than going into FCheck and resaving the files?

The same file imports fine into Combustion, but not AE.

Oh well, I guess Combustion is my workaround.

CaCo
Mylenium
01-06-2006, 07:34 PM
... been saved from fcheck? (and, as far as i know, is bit-for-bit identical).

Wrong. Mental Ray 3.4 + Maya introduced a new bit-flag (something to do with re-structuring the pass system) that AE's iff-importer does not know and thus refuses to read such files. There is no workaround except the one you are already employing.

Mylenium
floze
02-14-2006, 03:44 PM
We ran into the very same annoying problem, I wrote this little mel script then:
global proc iff2iff() {
fileBrowserDialog -m 4 -fc "openDir" -ft "image" -an "get_dir" -ds 2;
}

global proc openDir( string $dir, string $fileType ) {
$flist = `getFileList -fld ( $dir + "/" ) -fs "*.iff"`;
iffConvert $flist $dir;
}

global proc iffConvert( string $flist[], string $dir) {
$dir = ( substituteAllString( $dir, "/", "\\" ) + "\\" );
for ( $i in $flist ) {
$command = ( "imf_copy " + "\"" + $dir + $i + "\"" + "\ " + "\"" + $dir + "resaved_" + $i + "\"" );
print( $command + "\n" );
system ( $command );
}
}
Source it and type iff2iff in the maya command line. It'll convert any iff found in the given directory by copy-converting the original and prefixing "resaved_" to the converted files. It assumes that the maya bin directory is set as PATH in the environment. It's far away from being perfect, but it did the job, relatively painless and fast.
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