character pose gone screwy

This might not have anything to do with rendering. In a short animation the poses of the charaters look one way in the GUI and the render view but are very different when I batch render. And yes I am using the same camera for all 3 operations. The scene doesn't seem to change in any other way; the positions of the characters seems relatively the same, but the placements and angles of their various parts is radically different. Obviously I can't use this animation because I cannot apose the characters in the GUI and know how they will render. Can anyone help?


Kevin

Sounds funny, exactly how have you animated the characters? [key frame, trax editor etc.]

I set key frames. of course I used IK, FK, set driven keys and blend shapes. The problem seems to be localized to the spine. It has an IK spline.

your description is a little vague. however, when i was learning how to rig a character from Learning Maya: Character Rigging and Animation, i used a spline ik for the spine as instructed. then i imported various characters into scenes and posed them. on numerous occasions when i tried to rotate the characters i found that they were distorting badly. also if i poesd a character saved the file and then reopen it again the character had snapped back to it's starting position! therefore i can speculate that you may have posed your characters and key framed them correctly but the the ik handles may not have been keyed thus they will return to where they started from at frame one while everything else is animating! thus causing all sorts of strange things to happen. unfortunately this is part of the learning curve that you have to go through. idealy you should be creating; and key framing control objects that are parented or constrained to your ik's. also i have found it easier to not use a spline ik for the spine but use set driven keys instead for flexion and twisting, creating custom atributes in the channel box to be keyframed.

good luck

Bellwether

Thanks but I'm not a beginner and I have already realized every point you brought up. I have even spoken with people who have a wealth of knowledge beyond mine and even they cannot figure out this problem. I seems to be some weird quirk of Maya. But thanks again anyway.

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