Hi,

I'm trying to do some automation using hbatch, and I've come across a bit of an issue when trying to override the output files when calling the ‘render’ command.

When I call:

render -f 1 10 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.$F4.exr mantra1

And look in the created .ifd files, each .ifd file is set to render to /path/to/myNewRenders.0001.exr, because, I'm assuming, the variable substitution happens when calling the ‘render’ command, when the frame context is 1.

Alternatively, I've tried:

render -f 1 10 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.\$F4.exr mantra1

Which writes “/path/to/myNewRenders.$F4.exr” into the .ifd files, which would sound right to me, but when I pass this .ifd file into mantra to have it rendered, it, once again, evaluates the frame as 1, giving me a resulting file of /path/to/myNewRenders.0001.exr

Any idea how I can do this without calling something like:


render -f 1 1 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0001.exr mantra1
render -f 2 2 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0002.exr mantra1
render -f 3 3 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0003.exr mantra1
render -f 4 4 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0004.exr mantra1
render -f 5 5 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0005.exr mantra1
render -f 6 6 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0006.exr mantra1
render -f 7 7 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0007.exr mantra1
render -f 8 8 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0008.exr mantra1
render -f 9 9 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0009.exr mantra1
render -f 10 10 -a -o /path/to/myNewRenders.0010.exr mantra1


Thanks

Hi Hugh,

The easiest thing to do would be to set up the ROP that is actually rendering with the /path/to/file.$F4.exr then just call “render” on the ROP itself…

Is there any reason you can't do that?

You can still do it by scripting with two lines:

opparm RopThatIsToRender outputfile ‘/path/to/file.$F4.exr’ (note single quote protect the $F4)
render RopThatIsToRender

NOTE: The parameter name “outputfile” may be wrong, I don't have Houdini open ATM. Hold your mouse over the label on the ROP and it will tell you the name. Unless you're on Linux in which case you might just get black

Cheers,

Peter B

Thanks Peter, much appreciated.

The reason I was trying to do it in batch mode was that this is for a command-line (outside of Python) script to send a .hip to the farm to generate .ifd files and then render them. I wanted to allow a command-line option to override the final files that were being generated. I've actually since shifted this code from hbatch over to hython, which is a little easier to do things in!

Having a dig around in Hython, it appears that the parameter in question is “vm_picture”.


Thanks for the direction on this.

Yes, vm_picture, that was it

Hython for sure, for scripting is way better than Hscript. Sounds like you're on your way!

Cheers,

Peter B