Max has a few different ways to generate renders. Some of them pull their file format and weather it renders a single frame or a range, from Render Setup Window (0) even if you aren't using it to render you still have to set those options, COMPLETELY backwards and broken but its not surprising...
Also if you are rendering a range of settings through another method (Batch Render, Video Post, Script) but the render setup window is set to "Single" (like JonathanLambert pointed out) it will render all of the frames to a single frame. The ranges set in Batch Render ect will override the setting in Render Setup but it has to be set to anything but single for it to not keep overwriting the same file, again completely backwards and broken but its not surprising...
Typically people stay away from rendering avi's unless they are for quick previews and render raw uncompressed frames like .tga, then compile those with anyone of a few dozen programs that make avi's, AfterEffects, Quicktime, Microsoft Movie Maker, Autodesk Composite (ships with Max and Maya). That way if something happens during the rendering you have the completed frames and just need to render the ones that didn't make it, with a avi you often have to start over from scratch.
I personally use The batch render and ran into this problem so much that I wrote a very short maxscript, that sets the render output path and sets the range to active time segment. It gets called each time I bring up the batch render dialog.
(
renderSceneDialog.close() --Closes the RSD if open (Can't make changes if its open)
rendTimeType = 2 --Active Time Segment
rendOutputFilename = "C:\\junk.tga" --Sets the path and file format (change the extension to whatever you need)
renderSceneDialog.open() --Opens the RSD
)
You can drag this code into your max toolbar and click it before you render. I'm not sure what you're using to render but I added this to a button that also brings up an improved version of the batch render dialog.
TLDR:
- Press 0 to bring up the Render Setup Dialog (even if you aren't going to use it) Then set the "Time Output" to anything but single, the range doesn't matter it will be overwritten by whatever you're using.
- Also set the Render Output Path and file type to what you're using, otherwise you might end up with a single file called .avi but it is actually a .bmp or .tga.
I've dealt with the same issue not to long ago. It was frustrating as heck to find out that the hours rendering only produced 1 frame or not even close to the final range it was set at. This only happened when i tried to render to a video format. So to alleviate this issue i just started rendering to image sequences, png, tif, etc, and putting them together in AE. It proved to be so much quicker on max's part and also in AE. To go further and reduce the final file size for faster uploading, i used Camtasia Studio to convet the avi, mov, etc to mp4. So now my animations are dropped from 30GB+ to 5GB, then to 300MB.
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Also if you are rendering a range of settings through another method (Batch Render, Video Post, Script) but the render setup window is set to "Single" (like JonathanLambert pointed out) it will render all of the frames to a single frame. The ranges set in Batch Render ect will override the setting in Render Setup but it has to be set to anything but single for it to not keep overwriting the same file, again completely backwards and broken but its not surprising...
Typically people stay away from rendering avi's unless they are for quick previews and render raw uncompressed frames like .tga, then compile those with anyone of a few dozen programs that make avi's, AfterEffects, Quicktime, Microsoft Movie Maker, Autodesk Composite (ships with Max and Maya). That way if something happens during the rendering you have the completed frames and just need to render the ones that didn't make it, with a avi you often have to start over from scratch.
I personally use The batch render and ran into this problem so much that I wrote a very short maxscript, that sets the render output path and sets the range to active time segment. It gets called each time I bring up the batch render dialog.
( renderSceneDialog.close() --Closes the RSD if open (Can't make changes if its open) rendTimeType = 2 --Active Time Segment rendOutputFilename = "C:\\junk.tga" --Sets the path and file format (change the extension to whatever you need) renderSceneDialog.open() --Opens the RSD )You can drag this code into your max toolbar and click it before you render. I'm not sure what you're using to render but I added this to a button that also brings up an improved version of the batch render dialog.TLDR:
- Press 0 to bring up the Render Setup Dialog (even if you aren't going to use it) Then set the "Time Output" to anything but single, the range doesn't matter it will be overwritten by whatever you're using.
- Also set the Render Output Path and file type to what you're using, otherwise you might end up with a single file called .avi but it is actually a .bmp or .tga.