Specify render region on the CLI

On 23/02/2015 at 19:07, xxxxxxxx wrote:

It surprises me that C4D still (!) doesn't have the ability to region/tile render on the command line.  When I contacted support about this, they said to come here...so here I am.

I would like a Python plug-in that enables our farm management software to tell C4D to render a region of the image when it launches the render using the CLI instance of a full C4D install.  I didn't find anyone who had made such a thing in the past, but let me know if you know of such a beast.  Maya, 3dsmax, Blender, Terragen, and more all have this ability.  It usually looks like "-xstart 100 -ystart 250 -regionwidth 200 -regionheight 200" in addition to the normal switches.  I need this so we can use multiple machines to render large stills.  Before you ask, Team Render is not an option for us.

I can pay for this work, and I expect full source to be provided.  Let me know if you have questions.

On 24/02/2015 at 08:55, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi
I know. I miss these args myself. But theres a "Tile camera" or something in the content browser. We use that to divide the camera rostrum into the number of tiles we want.

The camera setup allows you to keyframe what slice you want to render, so we usually set up a simple timeline with one tile pr frame. Then we send that job to Deadline with 1 frame pr task. Its not what you want but it sure helps.

Cheers
Bonsak

On 24/02/2015 at 09:53, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Yeah...definitely not what I want.  That's a kludge at best, and requires a lot of scene file prep prior to submission.  Sorry, but that's not a solution in our case.

On 24/02/2015 at 10:36, xxxxxxxx wrote:

What farm management software are you using?

-b

On 24/02/2015 at 10:38, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Currently, we're using Squidnet.

On 24/02/2015 at 11:07, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Ok. Don't know that.
If i we're to hack this together in Deadline i would probably make a batch script (c4d python api) that would save out x nr out copies of the file in question and set each of them up to render different regions in Render settings. Them submit all of them as separate jobs to the farm.

Tried to find the Python API for Squidnet but couldn't find it.

Cheers
Bonsak

On 24/02/2015 at 11:09, xxxxxxxx wrote:

You don't really need to know Squidnet.  We work closely with their dev, so he can do whatever we need.  All we need is command line switches that we can feed to C4D when we start rendering a scene to define a region for it to render.

On 24/02/2015 at 11:41, xxxxxxxx wrote:

I see. I think your'e probably better of making a C++ plugin as you need to modify the scene before the rendering starts, and i don't think you can hook into that sequence via Python.

-b

On 24/02/2015 at 11:50, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Hopefully the plug-in wouldn't have to modify the scene file and save it...that wouldn't work at all.

If it has to be C++, that's fine.  I'd still need source when completed, though.  Hopefully someone here can do this.