[Randy Johnson]

Not sure what’s happening there… works for me.
Polygon Primitive
Make editable
delete three points.

Object manager looks like this:
Metaball
-Emitter
–polygon

Not sure why using a single point is better than a platonic though… maybe something to do with less points.

/Randy

[Randy Johnson]

In the render settings (cmd B) In the save tab there is a path option. You may want to disable Multi Render as well its in the Multi-pass tab of the render settings.

As for render speed…this is a common question. I am rendering a scene right now that is taking 11 minutes per frame… yesterday I had a project going at 45 seconds a frame it really depend on what is in the scene and how much processor power you have. There are a few threads that discuss how to get the fastest render times. But it does take time.

/Randy

[Randy Johnson]

You want to “render to picture viewer” or Shift R make sure you set up all the paths and stuff in the render settings.

Yes for each angle you will need to have a new camera but you can render out several angles at a time with a stage object (Can be found with all the lights) there you can key frame what camera you want at what time. Set a key frame by control Clicking the little circle.

You may also want to make sure that your frame Rates are all set to the same. If you are rendering image sequences (psd’s or tif’s) you have two spots and if you are rendering quickitime or similar you have three places to set the frame rate.

/Randy

[Randy Johnson]

While looking through the camera go to the drop down menu in the top left corner of the view port and make sure your on perspective.

As for more detail. Adams solution is far simpler than mine. Place the Align to spline on a Null Object and animate that. Then you can animate the camera’s attributes to your liking because the Align to Spline wont effect it directly like before.

The solution I mentioned has a few more steps.
Leave your Align To spline tag on the camera and animate it at the speed you want.
Then copy your spline and Place another align to spline tag on a NULL that points to the new spline.
Then you Put a Target tag on the camera that points to the NULL object. Now you can move the points around on the New spline to show the camera what to look at. (This works similar to rail spline).

/Randy

[Randy Johnson]

“Save Project” then place that entire folder in the net render folder where you get your results.

/Randy

[Randy Johnson]

Have you turned off all movement in the noise? Its default is at .1 that needs to be zero.
If thats not the case it can be your AA a compositing tag with forced AntiAliasing can solve it sometimes….

/Randy

[Randy Johnson]

There are a few ways to do this. I like using a camera target animated on along a seperate spline.
/randy

[Randy Johnson]

This is really where Matte paintings and render farms come into use. I would suggest rendering a few stills with distant objects and then using that image as your background so you don’t need to have all the extra stuff in your scene just a plane with a bitmap.
Your right on track with breaking it into smaller scene files. Also there have been a few threads about optimizing your scene for render that may help. A high poly count won’t be the biggest factor when it comes to render times. Textures and lights will hurt too.

/Randy

[Randy Johnson]

All the tags have an “Enable” option. You can key frame it by Control Clicking the little circle next to it.
/Randy

[Randy Johnson]

You can still use the duplicate tool. Select the object you want to replicate and Functions:Duplicate then in the attributes manager set the MODE to align to spline. Then you will need to tinker with the axis and maybe add a rail spline but that will certainly get the job done too.
/Randy