How to render a animation preview ?

Dunhou

Hello !

Question :

I wonder how can I do the same thing as the Make Preview do and auto save and show in Picture View ?

Details :

I think it is some steps :

Get the frame range and save path in Save in ActiveRenderData
Get the Viewport Renderer VideoPost settings
Render document as mp4 in half of the resolution
Save MP4 file to disk and load back to Picture Viewer

The output maybe like a 1s mp4 file named 'cube.mp4' and saved to disk .

for step 1 and 2 I have some experences , but for 3 and 4 , I have no idea how to do it right .
And I have read some post and python documents like RenderDocument() , but I don't know how it works with mp4 and how to set it . could you please provide a bare-bone code for this ?

Many thanks

Manuel

Hi,

You can retrieve the render settings, update them and, use the command RenderDocument. In c++, the command ShowBitmap allow to display a file in the Picture viewver while in python you can only display bitmaps. The bitmap passed to the RenderDocument function is used as a dummy.

from typing import Optional
import c4d

doc: c4d.documents.BaseDocument  # The active document
op: Optional[c4d.BaseObject]  # The active object, None if unselected

def main() -> None:
    rd = doc.GetActiveRenderData()
    data = rd.GetData()
    # This bmp will server as a dummy bmp, the project being save below
    bmp = c4d.bitmaps.MultipassBitmap(int(rd[c4d.RDATA_XRES]), int(rd[c4d.RDATA_YRES]), c4d.COLORMODE_RGB)
    file = "D:\\temp\\toto_preview"
    
    # Define the render setting so the file will be saved on the harddrive.
    data.SetBool(c4d.RDATA_GLOBALSAVE, True);
    data.SetBool(c4d.RDATA_SAVEIMAGE, True);
    data.SetBool(c4d.RDATA_ALPHACHANNEL, False);
    data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_FORMATDEPTH, 0);
    # define the file Format to MP4
    data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_FORMAT, 1125); 
    data.SetFilename(c4d.RDATA_PATH, file);
    
    
    if bmp is None:
        raise RuntimeError("Failed to create the bitmap.")
    if c4d.documents.RenderDocument(doc, data, bmp, c4d.RENDERFLAGS_EXTERNAL | c4d.RENDERFLAGS_PREVIEWSETTINGS) != c4d.RENDERRESULT_OK:
        raise RuntimeError("Failed to render the temporary document.")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Another way would be to use MovieSaver. The problem is that the container defined by the Choose function is only readable in c++.

This will probably block you to define the codec parameters.

Cheers,
Manuel

Dunhou

@manuel Thanks for that reply .

It's a cleary example that I can move on , a derivative of the qustion is if I cann't use ShowBitmap to show media file in Picture viewer , maybe I can get a range like 5f - 25f and render it and show it in sequence in Picture viewer in a folder ? Is it a stupid way or a no-exectable way

Like this
for fame in [ range of render ( 5f to 25f ) ] :
1. render it
2. show it

Dunhou

@manuel
And a move on question with "preview" is can I set a parameter with plugin Make Preview , How can I set some settings for plugin like this and call it with this settings ?

m_adam

Hi @Dunhou, Manuel being in vaccation I will take over your topic.

@dunhou said in How to render a animation preview ?:

maybe I can get a range like 5f - 25f and render it and show it in sequence in Picture viewer in a folder ?

Sadly it is not possible to create folder in the Picture Viewer via the API. As Manuel said the only way to have image sequence displayed is to have a movie to be loaded in the Picture Viewer. Which is not possible in Python cinse the ShowBitmap function accepting a Filename is not available in Python. But this is something in our radar and I will look to support ShowBitmap with a filename in Python as soon as possible.

For the second part of your question about how to iterate a range of frames look at basedocument_animate_r13.py example, you will need to edit line 45 with a call to c4d.documents.RenderDocument. But in any case you will not be able to see them animated in the Picture Viewer.

@dunhou said in How to render a animation preview ?:

And a move on question with "preview" is can I set a parameter with plugin Make Preview , How can I set some settings for plugin like this and call it with this settings ?

When you call RenderDocument, the 2nd argument is the BaseContainer representing the c4d.documents.RenderData. This argument let you change the render setting as demonstrated in the render_current_frame_r12.py example. The class description of c4d.documents.RenderData enunerates the possible IDs and expected values to be defining in the render setting BaseContainer. So in your specif case this give us:

import c4d

def main() -> None:
    # Retrieves a copy of the current documents render settings
    data = doc.GetActiveRenderData().GetClone().GetData()
    if data is None:
        raise RuntimeError("Failed to retrieve the clone of the active Render Settings.")
        
    # Define the render setting so the file will be saved on the harddrive.
    data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_FRAMESEQUENCE, c4d.RDATA_FRAMESEQUENCE_PREVIEWRANGE)
    # To define with manually specified frame rande this can be defined like so:
    # data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_FRAMESEQUENCE, c4d.RDATA_FRAMESEQUENCE_MANUAL)
    # data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_FRAMEFROM, c4d.BaseTime(5, doc.GetFps()))
    # data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_FRAMETO, c4d.BaseTime(25, doc.GetFps()))    
    
    data.SetBool(c4d.RDATA_GLOBALSAVE, True);
    data.SetBool(c4d.RDATA_SAVEIMAGE, True);
    data.SetBool(c4d.RDATA_ALPHACHANNEL, False);
    data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_FORMATDEPTH, c4d.RDATA_FORMATDEPTH_8);
    
    # define the file Format to MP4
    data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_FORMAT, 1125); 
    file = r"/Users/m_adam/Desktop/temp_render"
    data.SetFilename(c4d.RDATA_PATH, file);
    
    # define the render resolution
    data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_XRES, 1280); 
    data.SetInt32(c4d.RDATA_YRES, 720); 
    
    # This bmp will server as a dummy bmp, the project being save below
    bmp = c4d.bitmaps.MultipassBitmap(int(data[c4d.RDATA_XRES]), int(data[c4d.RDATA_YRES]), c4d.COLORMODE_RGB)
    
    if bmp is None:
        raise RuntimeError("Failed to create the bitmap.")
    if c4d.documents.RenderDocument(doc, data, bmp, c4d.RENDERFLAGS_EXTERNAL | c4d.RENDERFLAGS_PREVIEWSETTINGS) != c4d.RENDERRESULT_OK:
        raise RuntimeError("Failed to render the temporary document.")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Cheers,
Maxime.

Dunhou

@m_adam
Thanks for that explain .

For the 1st issue , that is ok , I could open mp4 file in the disk instead of show in Picture View tight now .

And the 2rd one , I am so stupid that didn't realize that make preview plugin is a warp for viewport render . Just wanna figure out how to set the dialog parameters .

But bt the way , animate example is a new one to me , thanks for piont out .

Cheers !

m_adam

Hi @Dunhou you can't control the Make Preview plugin, you have to rewrite the function yourself with all the tips previously shared in this topic.

Cheers,
Maxime.