Command line rendering - Viewing image in progress??

[Tobbe]

Hi,

When batch rendering from the command line... is there a way to view the render in progress?
When using mentalray the app imf_disp.exe can be used to "connect" to the running renderer. Is there a way to launch the VFB somehow??

Tobbe

[vlado]

We don't have a separate viewer application. However, on Windows, you will get the V-Ray VFB (if it is enabled), while V-Ray is rendering. Also, if you instruct V-Ray to create a .vrimg file, this file is written as V-Ray renders, so you can use vrimg2exr to convert it to an OpenEXR file and view it in any program that supports it.

If you are rendering through the standalone, you get the VFB on all operating systems (except Mac OS X 64-bit). There is also a way to get the image from the frame buffer, but you must instruct V-Ray to allow this, and then again you'll have to code your own viewer application.

Best regards,
Vlado

[JAKUB_ROTH]

If you are rendering through the standalone, you get the VFB on all operating systems (except Mac OS X 64-bit).

An old post but I've run into the same problem recently on 2.30.01. (OSX 64) .
Is there any chance this will be fixed/changed in the near future?
What is preventing a VFB to show up?


Thanks,
kuba

[vlado]

Is there any chance this will be fixed/changed in the near future? What is preventing a VFB to show up?

The GUI library that we use for the standalone (wxWidgets) doesn't have a good release for 64-bit Mac OS X yet and I don't want to use Qt because it's more difficult to ship it as part of the standalone.

Best regards,
Vlado

[MartinB]

As a separate feature request, I'd love the option for the VFB to be standalone viewer like 'IT'. So could have multiple copies of maya rendering to the same VFB, but more importantly if maya crashes you don't loose the VFB.

EDIT: also to view .vrimg files, especially with deep compositing coming up.

[vlado]

...but more importantly if maya crashes you don't loose the VFB.

You can set your output to a .vrimg file - in that case, V-Ray writes in it as the image rendering progresses and even if the file is partially written you can still load it in the VFB and view it later on.

Best regards,
Vlado

[JAKUB_ROTH]

The GUI library that we use for the standalone (wxWidgets) doesn't have a good release for 64-bit Mac OS X

Perhaps it is related. What I've noticed recently is that VFB doesn't show up on 32-bit version neither (tested on snow leopard, leopard and darwin 2.20, 2.30. it works though on darwin 2.00). The difference between these releases, from what I can tell is in missing vray.exe file in the latest (2.20,2.30) releases. Apparently VFB shows up when running vray.exe command, but is disabled when launching plain "vray". Is it only me or somebody else had similar symptoms?
Thanks!

[vlado]

Which Maya version(s)? In any case, for any Maya version that has 64-bit support, we keep the 32- and 64-bit code in sync (because of the whole universal binaries thing). We can't have the VFB in the 32-bit code, but not in the 64-bit code inside the same universal binary.

Best regards,
Vlado

[JAKUB_ROTH]

Which Maya version(s)?

2.00.04 maya2008_darwin works fine and I assume this is true for any 2.00 version.
Tested the 2.20.01 maya2009_darwin 32-bit and in this one VFB doesn't show up.

Silly question, is there any workaround? (passing the image to the external image viewer...?)

We can't have the VFB in the 32-bit code, but not in the 64-bit code inside the same universal binary.

... so the fix is not going to happen any time soon - at least until 64-bit wxWidgets will get better support.

[vlado]

Well, that's the moment where you can say a few "good" words for Apple breaking their existing APIs

You could use PDPlayer on Mac OS X to view .vrimg files in progress, but it's far from the most convenient solution (it only works for the final rendering, not for light cache or irradiance map previews).

Best regards,
Vlado

[Fredrik Averpil]

So... hehe, here's a thought. We really miss the VFB that got launched during batchrender in older versions of V-Ray. This was a great way for us to proof on-going renders. This is gone and never coming back, got it. However...

Since PDPlayer can view a .vrimg file being rendered (after the irradiance map (IM) / light cache calculation (LC)) we are toying with the idea to invest in PDPlayer just to use it to view ongoing renders. We might even look into how this could be automated on long renders (> 24hr), making PDPlayer reload the image frequently to show the updating render. Now, this is a messy and probably quite odd implementation of PDPlayer - if implementable at all.

Vlado, would it be impossible for you to create a standalone VFB application which launches when command line rendering?
This would be an application that would simply show the image while being rendered, thus showing what's going on. Having the sRGB button and the render elements dropdown would be the only things on my wishlist initially. It would be a huge plus to be able to see the IM/LC calculations but if not, at least we can see if something is going wrong with a render...

Thoughts?

[Tobbe]

+1 For that!

[vlado]

It's not a bad idea; there are several ways in which this can be done:

*) Always write to .vrimg file and use an external app to see it (be it PDPlayer or something else); the problem here is that you don't need .vrimg output in many cases, or you may forget to specify it. At the same time, this is the quickest option to implement.
*) Write a tool to show the contents of a render in progress - it would talk directly to V-Ray to display the contents of the frame buffer. This is more complicated and would require changes to V-Ray, as well as writing the external tool. But it might be more convenient in the long run.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Fredrik Averpil]

I think I speak for more users than just us here at Industriromantik when I say we want the complete, complicated solution, of course. But if there would be an interim period with a simpler solution, that would be better than nothing.

Let's do this?!

EDIT: With a simpler solution I mean that a super simple vrimg file viewer would be bundled with V-Ray for Maya.

[Fredrik Averpil]

It's not a bad idea

Bump, any news on this matter?