3ds Max magician Qinming released a free FFmpeg reader plugin for 2015-2017.
Basically you can read any image/video that FFmpeg supports directly in 3ds Max as background or map. For example, mp4, dpx and jpeg2000. Yes, finally you can read dpx!
More importantly, 2016 and 2017 version supports image cache option. You can play image sequence in real time. I tested with HD(1920×1080) resolution dpx sequence on my PC, i7-2600K with GTX 960. When cache was off, I got 6.4fps. When cache is on. I got 31.2fps!
Josef Wienerroither posted a great demo video on YouTube. Must visit!
Qinming included a detailed readme file.Therefore, I would not repeat how to install and things here.
Here is a few important things to remember.
Only FFVideo Plugin supports image cache. If you want to cache image sequence. You have to use IFL2 format. IFL2 is exactly same as IFL. Qinming just uses this extension to show a different setup dialog.
IFL2 also give us a very important benefit. IFL2 allow user read other natively supported format like jpg through this plugin. Why is this important? Let’s say you want to cache jpg sequence for your background. 3ds Max will try to read jpg using native jpg reader/writer. If you remove the jpg reader/writer bmi, you can make this plugin load jpg, But then you can’t write jpg since this plugin only read image files. So… if you want cache jpg sequence. just make IFL2 of jpg image sequence. Then this plugin will be used to read the jpg sequence instead of max native jpg reader.
The easiest way to make IFL2 file would be just making IFL as usual with Sequence checkbox and rename it.
Set Display Performance resolution same as image size. If you put smaller number, 3ds Max will try to rescale image which slows down play back.
If you turn on Gamma in 2016, the playback will be slower. 2017 is OK. The Gamma problem is fixed in 2017 by Qinming.
FFmpeg plugin for 3ds Max 2015/2016:
Link1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zqwymzuoz…eg2015.rar?dl=0
Link2: http://7xt4sg.com2.z0.glb.clouddn.com/ffmpeg2015.rar
FFmpeg plugin for 3ds Max 2017:
Link1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kpc7vjvx6…eg2017.rar?dl=0
Link2: http://7xt4sg.com2.z0.glb.clouddn.com/ffmpeg2017.rar
This plugin requires FFmpeg 2.8.6 LGPL library, download from here:
Link1(Official):https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/w…pl3.0-opencl.7z
Link2:http://7xt4sg.com2.z0.glb.clouddn.c…pl3.0-opencl.7z