Possible to start rendering from my own plugin?

Is it possible to "trigger" the IRender nXt plugin from another plugin so that it starts to render, or preferably adds a render to a batch queue?

I enjoy making stereo images with IRender nXt, and I would very much like to automate the process. It would be neat if I could write a plugin that could tell IRender nXt to render the current scene, move the camera slightly and then have IRender nXt render the new scene.

I don't need to change any rendering parameters from my plugin. I would only want my plugin to have SketchUp believe that the user has pushed the Render button in the IRender nXt toolbar.

Would that be at all possible?

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 9, 2011 at 1:50pm

To start a rendering, run this command:

$irnxt.start_rendering("all")

The "Batch Rendering Queue" is only available when using the rendering farm.

If you want to render both scenes, the bets things to do is to set up an animation with two animation pages, and no time between pages. This will then render just two frames.

The set the animation up to save .png files rather than creating a movie

The user will get this message when it is done.

If you want to start an animation automatically, we will have to make some changes to the engine

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by stewed on March 10, 2011 at 12:28am

Rendering both scenes as an animation is an excellent idea! This method is perfect (even though I have to start the animation rendering manually) since the model only has to be exported from SketchUp once (which takes forever, even when using the binary batch format). Thanks Al!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Boothy on March 10, 2011 at 10:01am

Would Still would be useful to have transparent png output to animation

Boothy

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 10, 2011 at 10:05am

That should be an easy option to add.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 10, 2011 at 12:34pm

Rich said he would try to implement the Alpha PNG animation files.

What do you do with these? Make a transparent movie?

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Boothy on March 10, 2011 at 2:27pm

No I would use the animation function to output multiple transparent PNG files as a alternative to using batch file where single model with various scenes was relevant - I only really use this format for render output (good for masks,alpha,backgrounds in PS etc) so I very rarely use this method because of no trans PNG export otput to animator.

While discussing multiple animation output from renderer - I think it is worth mentioning that in the scenario described in your earlier post that the page delays should also be adjusted in SU in model info ( see image below)

Also your post on last image (open folder dialog) only actually shows a range across one image - I also could not actually produce 2 scenes with this method unless I either selected loop back option which then produced 3 images - I have done this in the past with much more images but seem stuck with only 2 because the definition is only really producing 1 transition - am I correct in this or am I also doing something wrong ?

Thanks

Boothy

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 10, 2011 at 3:24pm

We'll have to test this. With the times set to 0, we may only produce images for all key frames except the last one.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by stewed on March 13, 2011 at 6:25am

I can confirm that when disabling page transitions and setting the page delay to 0, exactly one image is rendered for each scene (including the last one).

This is a great way to render multiple views of the same model. A nice workaround for the lack of a batch queue. Avoiding multiple time consuming exports of the model from SketchUp is nice too.