Help! Preview and batch renders are different!

[phalimjinx]

Okay,
So I've been having this render issue for a few days (yeah, I said days. Don't get me started...) Here's the story.

First of all, I have particles instanced with blood cell geometry which "flow" through capillaries (the capillaries were created by converting nParticles to mesh, if that matters. I don't see why it would, but anyway). The blood cells get oxygenated in this animation so I have a geometry sequence I set up in the instancer to switch between different instanced geometry with different shaders so the blood cells appear to turn to a bright red (with a little bit of shader glow). Sound good? Okay. Now for the problem.

I'm using IBL with final gather. The preview render looks great (well "great" is a relative term), but when I batch render, I lose the color change. It's almost as if Mental Ray doesn't listen to the particle's Object Index attribute. 

Okay, so I found a script on a forum that renders the preview frame and saves it out.
I found it here:
http://srv01.simply3dworld.com/showt...threadid=33608
It looks like this:

---

string $filename = "render";
string $cameraName = "persp";
int $startFrame = 1;
int $endFrame = 24;
string $directory = (workspace -q -rd + "images/");
for ($i = $startFrame; $i <= ($endFrame - $startFrame); $i++)
{
currentTime $i;
render -x getAttr defaultResolution.width -y getAttr defaultResolution.height $cameraName;
string $concatFilename = $directory + $filename + "." + $i;
renderWindowSaveImageCallback ("renderView", $concatFilename, getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat);
print ("Saved " + $concatFilename + "\n");
}
print ("Completed rendering of " + ($endFrame - $startFrame) + " frames.\n");

---

(thanks to NextDesign)

Works fine in Maya 2009, but in Maya 2011 i get an error:

# Error: file: /Applications/Autodesk/maya2011/Maya.app/Contents/scripts/others/renderWindowPanel.mel line 663: ImageFormats instance has no attribute 'oldOutf'
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "", line 1, in
# File "/Applications/Autodesk/maya2011/Maya.app/Contents/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/lib/python2.6/site-packages/maya/app/general/createImageFormats.py", line 185, in popRenderGlobals
# cmds.setAttr("defaultRenderGlobals.outf", self.oldOutf)
# AttributeError: ImageFormats instance has no attribute 'oldOutf' # 

---

Unfortunately I lose some geometry and the instanced particles (geometry) when bringing this file into 2009 so a fix for 2011 is pretty much necessary. 

Any idea what is going on? Or a workaround? 

Seriously, this is driving me crazy. If I could either find a way to make the batch render look the same as the preview, or the script to not have an error, I could be done with this shot and never have to look at it again. A coworker of mine had the same problem where the preview render looks different from the batch render but we weren't able to identify what the source of that problem was.
Thoughts?

[nowayfra]

try this line

catch(eval(renderWindowSaveImageCallback ("renderView", $concatFilename, getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat)));

not very stylish but should work

[thnkr]

See http://www.thnkr.com/wiki/index.php?title=AttributeError:\_ImageFormats\_instance\_has\_no\_attribute\_%27oldOutf%27

[joojaa]

It's almost as if Mental Ray doesn't listen to the particle's Object Index attribute.

just out of curiosity you DID bake the dynamics to disk before you asked it to batch render?! See the batch render lives in a different space so it has to re simulate, but it has a known issue with this. ITs not exactly a bug but rathera a cost saving feature*.

Also how do you drive the color, mentalray is not omnipresent, it does not know all maya does so some things it guesses what maya was thinking. Sometimes the export fails because the user has neglected to work maya as its supposed to work, this case maya  changes the value on frame change but because theres no explicit connection to some attribute in question mentalray export prunes this off.

Theres lost of things you can do which superficially work but dont really work out for you.

• your just not the sort of entity it saves cost for tough.

[phalimjinx]

Hey Joojaa,
Yes, I created a particle disk cache and everything looks right. The color is being changed by actually cycling through 5 poly objects with different colored blinns on them. I created a custom float, put a ramp on it, adjusted the array mapper to go from 0 to 4 and attached it to the Object Index attr under the Instancer rollout.

[phalimjinx]

I tried your bit of code nowayfra (thank you) but I didn't have any luck with it. It asked me to overwrite again but clicking okay gave me that same error. Also,  Michiel I did what that link said about setting the save image options box and I still get the same error. 
What am i doing wrong???? 

[nowayfra]

The catch command doesnt fix the missing attribute, it simply prevents your script beeing terminated by a occuring errror. The error will still be displayed but your script should spit out the frames nonetheless. Just tested it with maya2011 and it worked fine.

[phalimjinx]

Sorry, I guess I'm dumb, nowayfra.

I tried it again, still only 1 frame and that same error and that's that. Perhaps I'm not putting the code in the right spot? I put the line in the loop just before the renderWindowSaveImageCallback line. Is that wrong? It can't come before cause it needs $concatFileName to be declared, right? Man, if I could spend this much time on the animation itself, it would be an awesome shot. LOL.

[nowayfra]

replace

renderWindowSaveImageCallback ("renderView", $concatFilename, getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat);

with

catch(eval(renderWindowSaveImageCallback ("renderView", $concatFilename, getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat)));

[phalimjinx]

That did it! Thanks nowayfra!! You're awesome. A few more tweaks are needed (the preview render isn't looking the same) but I think I'm out of the woods! Thanks again! 

[asterx]

Hi nowayfra. Thank you very much for this fix. I have created a new version of this tiny script with your fix included. I never thought that it would be this popular :S

http://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?p=312967#post312967

Take care, and thanks again.

-John Mather (NextDesign)

[dez85]

Hey there guys, how you doing?

I was wondering if you could help me out with the following error regarding the script for Maya that has been discussed.  I am very eager to get this working as my current frame render works considerable faster than Maya batch render which doesn't even load.  I am running Maya 2011 x64. 

In the script editor I have input the following:

// Batch rendering workaround - John Mather (NextDesign)

string $filename = "ContainmentSHOT1 2";

string $cameraName = "Test:SHOT1";

int $startFrame = 108;

int $endFrame = 234;

string $directory = (workspace -q -rd + "images/");

for ($i = $startFrame; $i <= $endFrame; $i++)

{

currentTime $i;

// Old version

// render -x getAttr defaultResolution.width -y getAttr defaultResolution.height $cameraName;

// New version - supports MR and other renderers!

renderWindowRender redoPreviousRender renderView;

string $concatFilename = $directory + $filename + "." + $i;

if (getApplicationVersionAsFloat >= 2011)

// Thanks to nowayfra on creativecrash for his workaround

catch(eval(renderWindowSaveImageCallback ("render view", $concatFilename, getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat)));

else

renderWindowSaveImageCallback ("render view", $concatFilename, getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat);

print ("Saved " + $concatFilename + "\n");

}

print ("Completed rendering of " + ($endFrame - $startFrame) + " frames.\n");

When I input this into the Mel script the following error comes up:

// Error: renderWindowEditor: Object 'renderView' not found. //

And so I attempted executing it in Python, however only to be greeted with this error message:

# Error: SyntaxError: invalid syntax #

If anyone could possibly help me out with this then I'd greatly appreciate it.  I only have a little of a week left to get all this rendered for my final year at university and Maya batch render isn't playing nice.  The script would be a dream come true if anyone could help me get it working. 

Cheers guys

Derek

[nowayfra]

Try this:

int $startFrame = 1;

int $endFrame = 12;

string $camera = "camera1";

string $imageName = "matrix.";

string $path = "d:/";

string $pad[] = {"","0","00","000"};

for ($i = $startFrame; $i <= $endFrame ;$i++)
{

currentTime $i;

eval("renderWindowRenderCamera render renderView " + $camera);

string $outFile = $path + $imageName + $pad[size($pad) - size(string($i))] + $i;

catch(eval(renderWindowSaveImageCallback ("renderView", $outFile, getAttr defaultRenderGlobals.imageFormat)));

};

[t_111111]

I'd just like to say thanks so so much for this script, I talked about how I used it here: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-shading-lighting-and/fixed-undesired-white-pixelled-areas-on-mentalray-renders/m-p/6681884#M17941

Saved me a whole bunch of time, and also inspired me heaps to see people sharing like this. Very lovely of you

[casinoallianz]

Oh, it was really helpful, thank you