Batch Camera Render

272 votes
Version: 
1.18
Date Updated: 
08/03/2022
Author Name: 
Sergo Pogosyan

This script aims to replace standard 3dsmax's Batch Render and imitates Houdini Output Node workflow. Using it you can specify rendering parameters - frame size, frame number, output path - directly to camera object, so every camera in scene 'knows' what it intended to render. Additional functionality is Lighting Assignment - you can specify which light will be turn on or off for selected camera during the rendering.

1.18:

  • Support for 3ds max 2023 Update fixed

1.17:

  • Corona and Vray Sun inside Daylight System fixed (thanks to busseynova for reporting)

1.16:

  • CoronaSun supported inside Daylight System

1.15:

  • Don't Save Render Elements Checkbox (Thanks to antomor)
  • Limited support for camera objects in xref scene files (Only root objects in first level xrefs. Cameras in nested xrefs not supported)

1.13 Bugfix:

  • Deadline submission should work now

1.12 New Feature:

  • Deadline support.
    Very basic imlementation, it allows you to submit your jobs on a deadline server. Enter deadline repository address and check "Use Deadline" checkbox. Other checkbox doesn't matter in this case ("Net render", "Show Submit Dialog").
    Probably it requires Deadline 3ds max Submitter installed. I didn't have a chance to check it on a clean machine.

1.11 Features and fixes:

  • State sets support added
  • "projectname" keyword added which resolves to project's folder name
  • other fixes and improvements

1.10.3b Fixes:

  • Crash when vray ir/lcache maps are set to auto-save
  • Region render was not set properly during the rendering

This is major update of the script, so it may not be as stable as before. Backup scenes or cameras at least before running this version. More information can be found here - 1.10b Multiple presets for each camera

Previous updates:

1.10.2b Fixes:

  • Problems with render elements paths
  • Copy/paste of render region settings
  • Properly convert render region values when change resolution

New features:

  • Multiple presets for each camera
  • New keyword %presetname% to support multiple presets
  • Distributed rendering checkbox added to vray common settings
  • Bugfix - Net render not starting after cancelling during local rendering.
  • Improved performance with scenes with lots of cameras
  • Added support of Vray RT as a production renderer
  • Added support of using MFRender script to render scenes through BatchCamera script.
  • Bugfix - Error was popping up sometimes during drag-n-drop
  • Bugfix - Render elements didn't render in certain conditions
  • Bugfix - Pre-render/post-render scripts didn't work on network rendering
  • Bugfix - Select All and Toggle All buttons didn't work properly

Here are some details: http://usakhelo.github.io/batchcam/batchcam-1.9.20.html

Script's website - http://usakhelo.github.io/batchcam/

Github - https://github.com/usakhelo/batchcam

2015 Updates

  • Region render parameter can be specified for each camera
  • Set Viewport button sets viewport camera and resolution and aspect as well
  • It is possible now to specify backburner servers and server groups for silent rendering submit (code editing required)
  • Vray Elements fixed for Vray 3 and Vray output saving with VFB color correction
  • Cancelling of rendering of multiple cameras at once,
  • Hierarchical ini files

2013 Updates

  • Drag-n-drop of cameras in list
  • Camera list window size can be changed (script restart required)
  • When committing region render it is possible to switch to view render without restarting the render
  • Keyword syntax can be used in Scene State names - thanks to Stefan Runevik for suggestion

2011 Updates

  • Preview button added - renders only current frame without saving anything - no images, no vray maps, no scripts running, no elements.
  • Ortho mode added to Vray rollout - it turns any camera to orthographic, including Vray Physical camera.
  • Copy/Paste from one camera to one/several cameras - use new buttons at the top of the window.
  • Submit Scripts section - you can assign script files that will run on each render submit. Per Submit script runs once per render submit and Per Camera script runs for each camera before submit. All these scripts run on local machine, not on render server.
  • Last Rendered Location field - here is stored last render file location. Very useful for locating last-time rendered images.
Additional Info: 

Installation:

Run this script with Maxscript -> Run Script command from any folder on your hard drive, then go to the *'Customize User Interface' -> 'Toolbars'*, browse to category 'Sergo Pogosyan' and add 'Render scene cameras...' button to the toolbar or to the menu.

Usage:

When you start this script it iterate over all cameras in scene and list them in the dialog box. To each of these cameras you can assign frame resolution, number of frames to render including nonsequential frames, output file location and lighting setup. All these properties can be changed for one or several selected cameras. Output file location is split to folder path and file name, so you can specify new folder for all selected cameras in scene. 'Lighting assignement' section contains three list: Solo light list contains lights that will be only lights turned on during the rendering, 'Forced On' and 'Forced Off' lights are turned on or off respectively during the rendering. After all these setting will be set up (if some properties is not set value from the Render Setup will be used), check the camera(s) in the list and hit Render button. Check Net Render checkbox to submit network render job.

Supported lights: All bundled 3ds max lights, all Vray Lights
Supported cameras: All bundled 3ds max cameras, Vray PhysicalCamera

Version Requirement: 
3ds max 2008-202x
AttachmentSize
batchcamerarender_1.17.ms245.88 KB
batchcamerarender_1.18.ms245.92 KB

Comments

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sergo's picture

Attached is the version of

Attached is the version of MFRender that supports BatchCamera script. It has additional render button BatchCam.
I tested it quickly but didn't use it in production.

AttachmentSize
mfrender_1.ms 17.05 KB
amir3dsmax's picture

where is MFRender option

where is MFRender option ??
how to use it ?
thank for good script i us it everyday

sergo's picture

no color correction for Raw Exr-s

Hi,
Are you talking about vray raw exr with multiple passes inside? AFAIK there's no way to save those raw exr-s with baked vray color correction. If you know how to do it just let me know!
Thanks!

Vadim Sadykov's picture

Correction Control "Multipass" in VRay 3.20.03

Привет. Мне помог скрипт решить некоторые задачи, но я заметил что вывод пассов происходит отдельными файлами для color correction, я думаю стоит тебе попробовать сделать multipass для одного exr файла с сохраненным Color Correction.

Hi. Script helped me to solve some issues, but I noticed that passes' output comes with single files for the color correction, I think it's worth a try to make multipass for one "exr" file with saved Color Correction.

bcoyle's picture

great looking batch script

Question, is there a camera limit to this script? I have a scene with 57 cameras and when I try to select all to do some batch editing, the script hangs and I have to force quit out of 3dsmax.

I'm using a mix of vray cameras and max cameras, running 3dsmax 2012, with vray 3.0

It looks like clicking even a single camera in the script takes a chunk of time - so maybe it's a matter of waiting a few minutes for it to process the situation. Any way to speed it up?

sergo's picture

Script doesn't alter camera roll

I've tried the script on camera with animated roll angle and I could not reproduce roll reset.
If you can reproduce the bug please post the steps so that I could follow and get the same result.

bloomimages's picture

camera roll is overwritten

very useful script I would love to use on all my projects.

One bad bug: The camera roll parameter is reset to 0,0 which is very annoying as I am trying to render 11 different aerial views with different camera roll parameters from one file. I guess it is back to traditional batch render without passes...

sergo's picture

That's interesting. Could you

That's interesting. Could you just post render settings screenshot here?

I've tried on 2012+vray 2.3 and it seems to work. It may be because of vray 3, but I need to test further.

sclifford's picture

Wildcards for saving light cache don't work

Hi - maybe I've got my render dialog set incorrectly but I can't get the script to save my Light Cache to the defined filename per your example (%cameraname%.vrlmap). It works fine for the Irradiance Map but not light cache. It won't override the setting of the Vray dialog. Which means the vrlmap gets overwritten for each camera, and can't be loaded for the final pass.

I tried turning off autosave in the Vray dialog but then it won't save anything.

I'm using Vray 3.2 on Max 2016.

Thanks! This script would be a life saver if I could get it working for me.

sergo's picture

No, sorry, there's no way to

No, sorry, there's no way to set two different settings for one camera.
You need to duplicate actual camera, then copy/paste settings and then set scene state to different one.

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