Rendering only keyframes

[fred22]

Is there a script for only rendering the keyframes of a character set?

[campbell]

not sure if there is a script. i thought you migth be able to use pre-render scripts, but apparently batching doesnt care for frame changes, tho in UI single frame render does. so you could capture frames out of the renderView (or playblast, easier). if its a biggin, and you want to batch it, i might be able to write something for you.

[fred22]

I would like to render just playblast frames for storyboard timing to save time from doing full renders. Well I'm not terrible with scripting if you could just point me in the right direction Icould probably do it.

[mantrid]

You could just set your "Step" value in the render globals...set your start frame to 0, and set the "by frame" (step value) to 10 to render every 10th frame.... and don't forget to set your padding to 4 for playback purposes.

[fred22]

The only problem with setting the steps to 10 frames is I'm not rendering the keyframes I'm rendering every 10 frames! The purpose behind rendering keyframes only is to render out key poses in an animation then play them back timed like a storyboard animatic

[mantrid]

well how many frames altogether? If its just 10 to 20 frames...why not just go to your keyframes and do a "render current frame" and file>save image ? inpractical perhaps, but depends how many frames you need.

[campbell]

had a bit more of a play. it would appear that the seq. renders take a look at their global's frame range and stepping before they start, and stoically adhere to them throughout - no matter how you might be jigging time in the scene, it'll visit every prescribed frame for evaluatn and render (no matter what! - someone show otherwise ?!?).

so no seq batching in a hurry
this includes playblast and HW buffer.

so you gotta fire off individual frame renders, automated (yuh, the whole idea). use findKeyframe and currentTime to move about to relevant frames. fire renders off when you hit the frames, followed by a move on to next kFrame, do this until you find your on the last kFrame. do your rends with UI render, or for speed w/o plush edit up single frame range HW renders: playblast/glRender. id wrap this in an expressn, 'cause i like them.

it really is very simple to implement (easily <10 lines), so have a crack, if you have probs id be happy to dump an expressn nodual.

gluck, c.

[jozvex]

Wouldn't it perhaps be easier to instead of trying to render specific frames, just 'Step' your animation curves and then move the poses so that they are lined up frame after frame?

Then you could just render 20 frames (or however many poses there are) in a straight normal render.

[campbell]

hey jozvex,

yeah, i thought that initially as one approach too, even started scripting it (then managed to forget to mention it as a possibile option for if the scene really needed to be batched).

no need to step, given we'd be stacking them together, but you'd have to ensure/add keyframes on all crvs where any one keyframe exists, so poses would retain their original configuratns - there might be problems doing this anyway. very likely going to have problems w non-crved animatn in any of the cases too! (perhaps you end up baking _everything_ at your keyframes, and stack these together).

it realy is very quick to setup the frame jumping method (and you only need to set it up once, ever), and it doesnt require you to fiddle w your carefully posed crvs! hmm, and just thinking now it'd be easy enough to jig it to run thru inbetween frames to allow for non-crved animatn to run out correctly too, if needed. might be able to do this method w scene opened into a severely disabled interface mode too, if things need to be sped up (not sure) ...

[fred22]

Because i am want to render from a character set could I use the dope sheet summary attribute as a reference for where keyframes are in the time line? If so how?

btw - I have actually taken the summary and moved all the keyframes together to create a frame by frame render. this is a work around but I will be seeing alot more of this problem and hope to build a tool to fix this problem.

[campbell]

In reply to:could I use the dope sheet summary attribute as a reference for where keyframes are in the time line? If so how?

.... by visual inspection ? confused.

...so your are interested in the keyframe stacking approach, not time jumping? i can send you the 8 lines of expressn code ya know.. but whatever you feel is going to work for you best!

[fred22]

Please send the code. I am looking to automate the process because I will be repeating it quite a bit. thanks

[campbell]

ahh, scratch the exprssn.
here is a proc instead, just call kFrameRend to go (that is, HW buffer render each kFrame for ea selected object from the current time point on [you can jig the script if you want it to start at start of animatn or whatever]).

grab it from here:
http://www.users.on.net/neilandbron/

[shuggypudd]

I have seen some rigs with two Ik systems on a limb. I suppose thats one way of getting a controller to lock to the foot.