Sound alert when frame finishes rendering...

[evanerichards]

I'm looking for a way to get maya to play an alert sound when it finishes rendering a single frame (the way after effects does). A post render script perhaps. I found several for batch renders, but don't know much mel scripting and haven't found one for rendering a single frame. Seems like it should be pretty simple. Does anyone know of something like that?

Thanks!

[thekraken]

Hi,

Do you need a cross-platform solution or just something specific to some os(es) ?
Do you want to play a sound, or a simple system beep/bell ?

Basically you could add a post-render frame mel :
if (!`about -batch`) play_some_sound;

Playing a basic beep will be specific on each os, unfortunately the stdout redirection forced by maya will break the print("\a") trick, so you must fall back on platform-specific implementations, ie:

- windows : python("from winsound import Beep; Beep(2000, 200)")
- linux : python("with open('/dev/audio', 'wb') as f: f.write((chr(63) * 4 + chr(0) * 4) * 250)")
- osx : python("from AppKit import NSBeep; NSBeep()")

Playing a specific sound will be trickier, but if you got some working scripts, it should be easy to fit your needs.

HTH !

Tonio

[evanerichards]

I'm just looking for a windows 7 solution to play any sound really. A default bell/beep would be fine as long as it isn't so soft and short I miss it.
I'll try that post-render mel script and see if I can make it work

Thanks!

[thekraken]

The winsound python module should be sufficient, I can't test it here but I will try this solution at home : winsound.PlaySound("file_path", winsound.SND_FILENAME)

See http://docs.python.org/2/library/winsound.html

Kind regards,

Tonio

[evanerichards]

Hmm. That doesn't seem to work.
I get this error mostly:
# Error: line 1: NameError: file <maya console> line 1: name 'winsound' is not defined #

Also, I can see how to add a mel post-render script but what about a python post render script? Do you just add the script to the "Python Post Translate script" box in the render settings?

[t.petrov]

Do you just add the script to the "Python Post Translate script" box in the render settings?

No, Python post translate does something else.

You can use the pythong("") mel function.

[thekraken]

you can call python code from a mel script with the "python" command, and you have to explicitly import any required module since it's just like a freshly launched interpreter :

if (!`about -batch`) python("import winsound; winsound.PlaySound(...)");

the "about -batch" condition is not mandatory, but it is a good idea to avoid annoying sounds when launching batch renders, especially at the crack of dawn

Tonio

[evanerichards]

@t.petrpv - Nice. I'll give it a shot.
@thekraken - Sweet. I'll see if I can get that winsound thing working. The "from winsound import Beep; Beep(2000, 200)" command worked earlier, so maybe I'll just try to use the pythong("") mel function to run that script.

Thanks!