Batch rendering or alternative??

[brobins]

Hello

I am in the process of working on a number of car configurator jobs for a major car manufacturer and I am looking to streamline my work flow as much as possible. I will explain how I have set the jobs up in the past, what I am trying to achieve now and hopefully you guys will be able to guide me in the right direction

So to explain how the jobs have been set up in the past; I have a 'Base' scene which contains the cameras, lighting and all the cars 'Standard' options that are set as 'Vray Matte Objects'.

Then all the 'Configurable' Options are linked as Xref Scenes that need to be turned on one by one and rendered out.

What I would like to do it automate this process somehow. I was thinking of maybe using Scene States? - Having each configuration set up as an individual state with corresponding Render Output etc Then use some kind of Script that will Load each State and Submit a Network Render?

Would this be feasible?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated..

Many Thanks,

Ben

[flino2004]

why not loading all the xrefs and put all the objects of each xref in one layer
after that as you said set your states by layers.

[pg1]

check out render pass manager
takes a bit of getting used to but its a big time saver

[meanadam]

We've been theorizing about this as well. We call it the Studio2a Render Automater. I know it can be done.... Percy and others I know have done it with XML and PHP.... But we don't do PHP or heavy max script - so this project has been idle.

[instinct]

why not loading all the xrefs and put all the objects of each xref in one layer
after that as you said set your states by layers.

This can be tricky with car datasets (yes i could tell some stories there :P ) As you got a LOT of options you end up with a LOT of layers and even more importantly a LOT of geometry. Handling 75 mio polys in loaded xrefs aint too funny :P