[Bf-funboard] some pipeline related requests

Mon Aug 25 10:40:05 CEST 2014

Nice!!
Exactly what I'm looking for. Now it should be easy enough to get this
implemented (even for me).

Thanks,
Thomas

> Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com> hat am 25. August 2014 um 10:19
> geschrieben:
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Thomas Volkmann
> <lists at thomasvolkmann.com> wrote:
> > 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?
>
> You can do this, see the `background_job.py` template that comes with
> Blender (access from text editor templates menu).
>
> A different example script to render FBX files:
> https://github.com/ideasman42/pyfbx_render
>
> > 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 ;) )
>
> Yep, it should work fine.
>
> > 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.
>
> its possible, you can for example use Python to manipulate addon path,
> so you can have an on-load callback which re-configures Blender when
> loading a new blend file.
>
> But this is getting a bit outside what we support out of the box, your
> getting into customizing the default application which is OK, but the
> more you want to make Blender work differently, to the defaults the
> more work you give yourself.
>
> >From what you are saying, its probably easiest to just have some
> different blender launchers for different projects (if you really need
> them to have entirely different configurations, keymaps, addons,
> preferences... etc).
>
> > 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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>
>
>
> --
> - Campbell
>