Batch Rendering

[StompinTom]

Hello hello,

First off, I profusely apologize because this has been written about before but I only have a short while right now.

To increase productivity, batch rendering in Indigo would be lifesaver. I often set up scenes with several camera angles then go through the process of rendering, switching camera, re-exporting, rendering, etc. If there were a way to load several different cameras while setting max samples or max seconds for each image, I could leave my rendering machine to slug away at those while I do my ridiculous running around. Lately I've been traveling a bunch and hopping from one city/part of town to another so I often leave my desktop machine running over the weekend while I'm away. If batch rendering were possible, I could come home to a set of renderings ready to be sent off.

The format could be something like defining a list of cameras to include in the export script, which then would pump out a cameras.igs file, much like now, though Indigo would check to see how many cameras are in there as well as whether or not max samples/seconds is enabled and then proceed to chew through the list.

Something like this would be an urgent workflow speedup that I would be prepared to pay for to support (A guinea to the man who bags the most heads!) if that is any kind of incentive.

Anyways, thoughts on this, comments/critiques would be most welcome as I'm sure I'm not the only one who could benefit from something like this. I'm constantly looking for ways to maximize efficiency, especially with a renderer which is generally slower than other engines, so any improvements would be blessing!

All the best,

Tom

[ENSLAVER]

I see the benefit in having it coded into the exporter, most apps can be really tricky (some impossible) to manage batch rendering in. I think the main challenge would be setting up the UI part of the batch rendering so it's simple to understand/user friendly.

A hack way of doing it at the moment would be using the inbuilt animation in the exporter and using some kind of application script (python, maxscript, whatever your app uses) to change to camera 1 on frame 1, cam2 on frame2, etc. This is pretty easy in MAX but I don't know about scripting in other apps.

You could probably also export each view as a seperate scene (you would have to retrieve each one from your temp folder most likely and rename them as they export) then use a batch file to render them, so far I can only see it working for time, not SPP. Batch is pretty limited, but then again so is my batch knowledge lol.

.bat file

Code: Select all

CD /D "C:\Program Files\Indigo Renderer\"

START /B  Indigo.exe --thread_priority normal "G:\renders\Untitled-scene.igs" -o "G:\renders\Untitled.png" -halt 5000 -haltspp 0  

timeout /t 5001

START /B  Indigo.exe --thread_priority normal "G:\renders\indigo_flux2-scene.igs" -o "G:\renders\flux.png" -halt 3000 -haltspp 0  

EXIT

Also if you have something like... autohotkey or other macro programs that supports slightly more advanced scripting it could be easy enough to start the next render when the previous reaches SPP (just have to find the exported files and put them somewhere safe).

[Zom-B]

Hey Tom,

I'm on C4D where I would solve your Problem like this:

In C4D you can animate camera changes by using the stage Object.
Simply change camera (with custom Indigo camera Tag) from first frame to second and to third etc.
Now you should have a short animation with each frame a different camera+settings.
Animate your light material settings etc. to fit the different camera angels and moods.
The halt parameters in C4D can be animated too, so simply change it from frame to frame to fit your needs.

start rendering, go to holiday and come back for a bunch of finished images

Maybe this workflow can be adapted in other 3D Apps too!
(I use this technique for C4D based networkrendering over the internet to have my scene only
once transfered, and not a big bunch of scenes for some different camera angels)

[pixie]

Well considering that a scene can and should be made of lots of cameras it would be nice that indigo would allow the user to change them on the fly once the scene is set up. This falls a bit outside the scope of batch rendering, although it could be easily made to take it into consideration. Since the scene is already in RAM it would save time on load and on export and ease the workflow in the process, perhaps even extending it so that for each camera we could have a different set of illumination.

My 0.02$

[StompinTom]

I imagined it to be something like this:

The exporter (Blendigo, in my case) has an option to turn on multiple export of cameras, and then has a field where you can add cameras in your scene to define which shots will be rendered. Once you add all necessary cameras to the list, you set max samples/seconds and export your scene with a camera file with all the listed cameras, in order.

Indigo takes this, reads the different cameras and starts at the top of the list, much like animation, I suppose, except without transferring motion blur, etc. Simple, I think, but it would need something in Indigo to recognize that option.

Perhaps even in the render settings tab, once you open a scene, it could display a list of available cameras in that scene under the Resolution drop-down? Then you don't even need to re-export, you can just restart the rendering with a different camera if you're not in batch mode.

Another implication of this would be that camera settings (fstop, exposure, ISO) should be moved to camera data, not scene data, as you don't want to change global settings every time you switch views between different lighting conditions.

[3form]

Hi most likely no one will see this post but here is a possible solution in max http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/louis/sw ... in_3ds_max goodluck