The Batch Render tool offers you an efficient, visual approach to setting up a sequence of different tasks or scene states to render automatically. From the Batch Render dialog, you control the following:
If a problem is encountered by the Batch Renderer, you will be notified by means of the Batch Render Completed dialog. This is an error dialog that appears and notifies you about which batch renders did not complete and, if possible, provides a description of why the failure occurred.
If the cause of the error cannot be identified, then the error entry will simply state Failed. The most common causes for failure are:
Batch Render.
This adds your first rendering task to the batch render queue.
By default, the Camera parameter is set to Viewport, which means that the task will render the active viewport. To change to a set view, make sure the scene contains at least one camera, and then choose the camera view to render from the Camera drop-down list.
To use the Batch Render tool with Backburner:
Before attempting to use the Batch Render tool with Backburner for network rendering, make sure the Backburner Manager is running on your managing workstation and that Backburner Server is running on all the other workstations that will receive the rendering assignments. For more information on setting up Backburner Network Rendering, refer to Network Rendering.
The available rendering servers show up in the list on the right side of the Network Job Assignment dialog.
If you are running the Backburner Queue Monitor, you'll see all the camera tasks listed as rendering jobs in the Job section of the Queue Monitor.
Adds a new rendering task to the queue, using the default settings. By default, a new task is set to render the active viewport. To set it to render a particular camera, choose the camera from the Camera drop-down list.
Selected Batch Render Parameter group
By default, any tasks you've designated for batch rendering use the current Time Output and Output Size parameters from the Render Setup dialog.
For example, if the Output Size settings on the Render Setup dialog shows that you have a Time Output settings of Single and an of 800 width and 600 height, when you add a camera, its Selected Batch Render Parameters will mimic those settings. Likewise, if the Render Setup dialog has a Time Output set to Range and frame 0 to 25, the Frame Start and Frame End settings on the Batch Render dialog will default to those Time Output settings.
This group gives you access to changing those default parameters.
The last frame to be rendered for the highlighted task. Its default state also matches the Time Output group settings on the Common panel of the Render Setup dialog.
The default Frame Start and Frame End parameters correspond to the Render Setup dialog parameters as follows:
| Render Setup dialog >Time Output | Batch Render dialog Frame Start/End |
|---|---|
| Single | Defaults to the frame set by the time slider. |
| Active Time Segment | Defaults to 0 (zero) and the last frame of the animation as set in the Time Configuration dialog. |
| Range | Defaults to the range of frames specified, such as 0 (zero) To 14 or 6 To 11. |
The Frame Start and End settings also conform to the current time configuration format; i.e. Frames, SMPTE, Frame:Ticks, or MM:SS:Ticks.
Lets you change the default name of the highlighted task. The default naming structure for camera tasks uses “View” plus an incremented view number, such as View01 or View02. If you want, you can change the task's name to something more descriptive.
If you're rendering an element without specifying a file name for the element, the batch renderer appends the element type to the batch output file name. For example, if the batch output file name is MyBatch.png, and you're rendering an Atmosphere element, then the element output name becomes MyBatch_Atmosphere.png.
The ellipsis (...) button opens the Render Output File dialog where you can specify the output path, file name and file format for the rendered image of the selected camera task.
Once set, the output path and file name appears in the output path field and the file name appears in the Output Path column of the task queue.
This drop-down list shows any cameras in the scene.
By default, a task is set to render the active viewport, as indicated by the “Viewport” entry in the Camera column of the task queue. You can use this list choose a camera from any in the scene for the highlighted task. The new camera is shown in the Camera column of the task queue.
To set the highlighted task to render the active viewport, choose the dashed line (-------------------------) from the top of the drop-down list.
Choose the dashed line to render the active viewport.
This drop-down list displays the scene states, if any, that you can assign to the highlighted task. If no scene state is active then current scene settings are used.
When on, opens the Network Job Assignment dialog when you click the Render button.
Each camera task in the Batch Render dialog is passed to the Network Job Assignment dialog as an individual rendering job instead of a single job. By default, the Network Job Assignment dialog uses the name of the MAX file as its job name, and it then appends the name of the camera task. For example, if you have a scene named Athena_High_Rise and camera tasks for three cameras, the jobs will look like this in the monitor: Athena_High_Rise Camera02 View01,Athena_High_Rise Camera01 View02, and Athena_High_Rise Camera01 View03.
