Rendering Automation

[batfink82]

I am trying to find a way of automating the process of multiple camera renders. I know about the batch rendering workflows and scripts and these are not what I am looking for.

 

For example I have 20 verified camera positions, all of which have different render sizes (due to vertical shift etc), they all have different lighting set-ups and presets, the sun positions are also verified and must be kept with the correct camera.

 

We therefore set-up .max files as just camera+lights files, the model information is then xref'd into the multiple cameras.

 

We also tend to render different combinations of model files to give us a different passes to be combined in Photoshop.

 

Ultimately this can lead to a situation whereby 20 cameras require 80 renders to be set-up and dispatched to backburner this is very laborious and error can easily be made.

 

Is there a 3rd party method for setting up the correct file combinations so that all 20 cameras can be sent with all the various settings already applied?

 

I have used systems before which does exactly what I want but they were developed in-house and require alot of backend services (oracle etc). I am looking for a more simplistic operation to streamline our workflow.

 

Cheers

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Have you tried this script as a replacement for the batch script? It is a lot mroe powerful than the default one.

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/batch-camera-render

[batfink82]

Yeah ive tried all the different scripts around and they aren't what I'm looking for. I think the answer is a 3rd party operation which might not be inside max.

 

At my previous company we used an excel spread sheet to choose a camera file, you could then choose which xref's were loaded, set render size, choose output file path, render file type and load preset etc.

 

You could do this for as many cameras as you wanted, allowing you to send hundreds of renders at a time. This is great for large planning jobs with 20+ cameras.

 

The excel spreadsheet would then automatically open max, load xref's etc etc and dispatch the renders to backburner for rendering.

 

Because the spreadsheet ran from file path locatiosn is meant that if you found you needed to update one of the models then resubmitting all the renders was very quick and painless.

 

I might try other avenues as this technique is worth the development investment.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

You can send to Backburner via a batch script. So in theory you could set several files to render in that script. Then moke the modifications to the files themselves, and then simply click the script and send all of the cameras and files to the farm at once.

 

The batch script isn't documented well, and is a pain to setup, and will take a lot of coordination with anyone working on the files. But.. you could probably get it to do what you want.