[Bf-committers] Render Layer Proposal

[Bartek Skorupa]

Before I start commenting, let me say that I am with you and also  
think that the way Render Layers are rendered could get some  
improvements.
I fully agree that it would be very useful to have an option to  
automatically render every pass of every render layer to separate  
folder without having to go through the pain of dozens of File Outputs.

I have however a few questions:

> *Only 1 RenderLayer*
> You can't use the power of RenderLayer when saving into file  
> sequence! By
> that I mean using more than 1 RenderLayer with each of them having  
> specific
> parameters (Layers, mat overall, certain passes).
> Only the first RenderLayer get rendered the other one are ignore.  
> This mean
> using the power of this feature is only available if you are using B's
> compositor otherwise it is useless.


What do you mean saying that "Only the first RenderLayer gets rendered"?
When you render to MultiLayer exr - all passes of all render layers  
get stored.

> *Only Combined get Saved*
> Probably the worst part. If you have checked multiple passes, but  
> didn't
> save into a Multi-layer file format (ie exr), then the passes are  
> useless.

I don't quite follow. If you really want to store all of the passes -  
you simply select MultiLayer as a format and you're done.
You can add in in compositor in some other file if you wish and have  
full access to all of the passes of all of the render layers.
I don't fully understand what you mean here.


Cheers

Bartek Skorupa

www.bartekskorupa.com




On 2012-01-16, at 21:46, François T. wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Yet another proposal, so I know nobody have times for proposal and  
> stuff
> but since I passed the entire day linking renderlayers passes to  
> fileOut
> one by one, my head hurts ! So I have to give it a shot !
> Once again, I guess I'm the only one using Blender with other apps  
> because
> I really don't understand how people can stand the current workflow.
>
> I'm working on a project where all 3D is done in Blender and  
> composited in
> AE. AE does support EXR multilayer extraction, but its via plugin (not
> native as in Nuke) so it is slow (especially if you working in 32bpc  
> HD).
> So I decided to render each 3D passes (in my case Combined, Z,  
> Diffuse,
> Spec, Color, Velocity, UV and AO) to its own file sequences and here  
> are
> all the bumps I got.
>
> *Only 1 RenderLayer*
> You can't use the power of RenderLayer when saving into file  
> sequence! By
> that I mean using more than 1 RenderLayer with each of them having  
> specific
> parameters (Layers, mat overall, certain passes).
> Only the first RenderLayer get rendered the other one are ignore.  
> This mean
> using the power of this feature is only available if you are using B's
> compositor otherwise it is useless.
>
> *Only Combined get Saved*
> Probably the worst part. If you have checked multiple passes, but  
> didn't
> save into a Multi-layer file format (ie exr), then the passes are  
> useless.
> To do so you have to (except if I missed something) :
> - turn ON the compositor
> - plug a pass to a FileOut Node
> - setup the FileOut Node
> - repeat the step for each passes
> - leave a Compositor Node (otherwise it refuse to render the  
> animation)
> which will create another file sequence in the output folder you  
> defined in
> your Render settings (extra useless GB used on my harddrive)
>
> Yes, I could probably create a quick and dirty python scripts which  
> will do
> all that for me in one click! But this is not the point since,  
> correct me
> if I'm wrong, I think that going through the compositor only to do  
> that is
> slowing down the render time and play with memories and stuff for  
> nothing.
> Its like combining passes, to seperate them again to save them into
> different files .... o_O
>
> Plus on top of that, even with a python script, this workflow is  
> still a
> pain in the ***
>
>
>
> *Proposal*
>
> The idea would be to bypass all this nightmare in case you have :
> - more than 1 renderLayer turn ON
> - AND/OR more than 1 pass checked
> - you didn't select a Multi-Layer file format
> - the compositor is not turn OFF
>
> Then all we have to do is using RenderLayers name and passes name to
> construct the file path as :
>
> render.folderPath + "/" + sceneRenderLayer.name + "/" +  
> render.fileName +
>> "_" + PassName + .EXT
>
>
> *note that in this case seperating the render.folderPath and the
> render.fileName would also be a change to the actual render.FilePath*
> *
> *
> Yet I don't know how complicated it would be to save each buffer  
> into a
> seperate file, but since it is possible to do it for a Multi-Layer  
> format,
> I guess it shouldn't be to different for a file sequence ? :$
>
>
>
> You can even push the proposal even more far away where you can have  
> more
> than 1 output. one output to openEXR float HD, ... and a second one  
> to a
> H264 SD and a third one to JPG, ... So you can easly check what as  
> been
> render by playing a lightweight h264, and use proxy for your openEXR  
> with
> the JPG. So the buffer is computed once and saved into different file
> format at the end without going through the trouble of the slow  
> compositor
> (even when it will get faster ;). But this almost another topic
>
>
>
> Anyway this is how I'd personaly loved to have it if its possible :)
>
>
> cheers,
>
> F.
>
> -- 
> ____________________
> François Tarlier
> www.francois-tarlier.com
> www.linkedin.com/in/francoistarlier
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