[Bf-funboard] some pipeline related requests

Thomas Volkmann lists at thomasvolkmann.com
Mon Aug 25 09:47:33 CEST 2014


Hi,
thanks for the answers! Python would be my weapon of choice, although I don’t
see how I would be able to add a commandline flag to the Blender executable
then. Maybe I should go into more detail about what I want to do. It all comes
down to try to integrate Blender into our RoyalRender renderfarm. I found this
script ( https://github.com/CallistoVFX/RoyalRender_Blender_Submitter
<https://github.com/CallistoVFX/RoyalRender_Blender_Submitter> ) which is
working for us, except that we are not able to specify which layers we want to
render. The RoyalRender submitter would let you select which Scene/layers to
submit and create a renderjob for each one. Meaning it would create a
commandline for each job that gets send to the clients. Ideally I would like it
to look like this:

blender.exe -b "foo.blend" -S <SCENE> -L <LAYER> -o <OUTPUTNAME> -x 1 -t 0 -s 1
-e 5 -a

Except for the layers everything is working fine. I would love if the resulting
files would be named like:

<OUTPUTNAME>.<LAYERNAME>.<PASS>.#####.<EXT>

As you specify an outputname for every scene anyway it is not neccessary to have
<SCENENAME> in the filename. I would suggest to have Blender add LAYERNAME and
PASS automatically to the filename, so the user has not to worry about it.

So, the main task for this would be, to add the commandline flag to the
blenderexecutable and have blender add layer- and passname to the fileoutput (if
not multilayer-exr). I don’t think that can be done via an addon, can it?

2.
If we are using the extracted blender (not the installer), the BLENDER_SYSTEM
paths are not used (only USER and LOCAL), and we can modify these variables to
point to our shared config-location. Do I get that right? (I’ll give it a try
anyway ;) )
But it would be really really nice if it was possible to add custom locations
(plural). Maybe you have a set of project related scripts/tools/settings that
you want to store with the project and not load it when working on other
projects. You would launch blender then with a commandlineflag to point to the
workgroup (using the XSI term for the config/plugin location) you want to
connect to. As I see it, this is not possible at the moment.

cheers,
Thomas



> Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com> hat am 25. August 2014 um 04:25
> geschrieben:
>
>
> Quick reply, I think Bassam covered this mostly, but here goes...
>
> 1 & 1.a: Use Python, I know this may sound like some cop-out answer,
> but if you really want fine grained control about rendering different
> layers to different locations... you can get this with quite a simple
> script, Also these kinds of issues tend to be less obvious & generic
> then you might initially think (how to handle animations, overwriting
> options, color management.... ) its all possible, but with Python you
> can fine tune this stuff, probably the script will be <25 lines and
> not hard to write.
>
> I would go as far as to say - if you want to have configurable render
> farm, its mandatory to have some kind of Python initialization script,
> which handles any number of details - check for missing textures,
> baked caches... check output paths on compositor nodes etc...
>
>
> 2. Yes, see "Environment Variables:" section in "blender --help"
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 10:07 PM, Thomas Volkmann
> <lists at thomasvolkmann.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > while checking how Blender could fit into our pipeline, I ran into some
> > issues
> > that maybe someone finds worth fixing/implementing.
> > First a short list, and description further down:
> >
> > 1.: render renderlayers (and passes) to separate files
> > 1.a: commandline flag to chose which renderlayer to render
> > 2: additional location(s) for Configuration and Data files
> >
> > It's pretty much self explanatory, but nevertheless some words of
> > explanation:
> >
> > 1: When more layers are selected and I have an outputformat other than
> > multilayer-exr, they will overwrite each other and only the last rendered
> > layer
> > survives.
> > Possible solution could be to either hardcoded the layername to the
> > outputname,
> > or allow the usage of tokens (<Scene>.<Layer>.<Pass>).
> > I have a thread on blenderartists with more datail if needed:
> > http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?346014-rendering-layers-to-files
> >
> > 1.a: When it is possible to render layers separately, there should also be a
> > commandline flag for it (where "-o" should override the eventually hardcoded
> > name).
> > This would be mandatory for proper renderfarm integration.
> >
> > 2: I think it would be good to be able to add custom locations for
> > Config&Data
> > files. I'll quote my blenderartists post
> > <http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?346023-Additional-Configuration-amp-Data-Paths>
> > here:
> > is it possible to have more locations for configuration and data files than
> > SYSTEM, LOCAL and USER?
> > http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Introduction/Installing_Blender/DirectoryLayout
> > I would like to have one place (or more) on the server for additional
> > settings,plugins,addons, whatever.
> > SYSTEM doesn't work, because all users shall run Blender from the network.
> > USER doesn't work, because either I would have to deploy the stuff for every
> > user, or every user has to go with the same setup
> > LOCAL would work, but I would need to install stuff for each separate
> > version or
> > build.
> >
> > That's basically it.
> > Any thoughts/questions/advice?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Thomas
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-funboard mailing list
> > Bf-funboard at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-funboard
>
>
>
> --
> - Campbell
>


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