[Animation] Exporter first creates blank frames

[Doug Armand]

I don't remember Blender/Indigo doing this before but when I render a still animation sequence, .png, from Blender the exporter first creates a series of frames that are just black before it starts to render the proper frames in Indigo itself. Anyway to avoid these blank frames?. Having these created is a bit crazy as it takes time and leaves behind a series of files that only get deleted afterwards and it adds time to the rendering. They aren't placeholders as when the proper Indigo renderers start they have the full filename + a sequential number whereas these blank ones only have a sequential number.

So what am I doing wrong?

Using Blender 2.69 with Indigo x64 3.6.26. Animation is rendering to 16bit .png still frames.

Any help/tips appreciated

[StompinTom]

Yeah, that seems to be standard. It creates an empty .png when it writes the scene file, so there will still be a delay before rendering while it goes through and sets up all the scene files for each frame. It's funny behavior though.

[Doug Armand]

Hi Tom and thanks for the reply. Not what I was hoping to hear but I do understand that animation is not a priority for Indigo. Shame as I'll probably have to use another renderer going forward.

[Zom-B]

Not what I was hoping to hear but I do understand that animation is not a priority for Indigo.

Bugs that keep you from using Indigo are crucial and should have high priority!
I'm sure the devs see that the same way as I do and will take care...

[OnoSendai]

We'll look into fixing this soon.

[Doug Armand]

Thanks Ono - Looks like short animations are likely to feature more and more in my future so it would be nice to keep using Indigo.

[StompinTom]

Doug, I've done loads of little animations and things; this behavior has never been a show-stopper, just an extra step before rendering. It makes sense that it has to export all the frames before launching the render queue, but the empty PNGs really don't take up any space and can be deleted right after. If it's just the matter of empty frames, maybe it's something that can be fixed on the scripting side, I'll take a look when I get some time.

It would be nice, however, for Indigo to plug into Blender as Cycles does at the moment. I believe the Blender devs were / are trying to make the render engine API more conducive to this. Wouldn't mind helping out if possible as I imagine that would lead to quicker (more direct?) rendering from Blender, and hopefully feedback / real-time adjustment of scene data through Blender.

[fused]

I've improved this a bit for the next release.

The output path is used correctly now, that means Indigo will save the images with the same name as blender does. The blank frames are still written by Blender but Indigo will overwrite them as the animation renders.

[StompinTom]

I've improved this a bit for the next release.

The output path is used correctly now, that means Indigo will save the images with the same name as blender does. The blank frames are still written by Blender but Indigo will overwrite them as the animation renders.

Sweet. I added in the option to do a Shadow Pass in the Render Settings a little while ago, could you add that as well?

[fused]

I've improved this a bit for the next release.

The output path is used correctly now, that means Indigo will save the images with the same name as blender does. The blank frames are still written by Blender but Indigo will overwrite them as the animation renders.

Sweet. I added in the option to do a Shadow Pass in the Render Settings a little while ago, could you add that as well?

Of course. Can you send me a patch?

[StompinTom]

Haven't got it here at work, but it's in this thread: http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... =8&t=12769 near the bottom! Let me know if that works. I think the only changes were to the panels/render.py and properties/render_settings.py files.

[fused]

Thanks, will try it.

Regarding the output path: Is it "normal" that blender keeps forgetting it? Set output path, save, restart blender, output path points to temp....

edit: it only seems to forget it when I use # characters for the frame numbers.

[Doug Armand]

Regarding the output path: Is it "normal" that blender keeps forgetting it? Set output path, save, restart blender, output path points to temp....

Try setting the location using the File/User Preferences in the File tab set Temp: to your required location. But I agree I don't know wht Blender doesn't save and explicit location in the output path in the render section.

BTW appreciate you guys looking into these Blendigo problems as I'm seriously thinking of getting back to using Blender/Indigo full time after a brief dalliance using Cycles.

[StompinTom]

I'm seriously thinking of getting back to using Blender/Indigo full time after a brief dalliance using Cycles.

I've dipped and dabbled but keep coming back

Wonder if it's worth saving the render path to a separate new scene string property which reloads it whenever the scene is booted?

[Doug Armand]

Wonder if it's worth saving the render path to a separate new scene string property which reloads it whenever the scene is booted?

Well the problem really seems to be in Blender from what I can tell so it's not really a problem of Blendigo/Indigo. I'm not sure Blender doesn't save the destination when you save the file - but hey that's computing right? :^)