[iandavis]

naw... it's a Lightwave thing too. I've lost a couple choice 12 hour renders just by accidentally clicking the render button...

grrrrrrr.

[deesee]

same for max plugin. I've lost many a render this way.

[Micha]

Please, for me too.

[Thomas An.]

If the plugin keeps asking everytime (for every one of 100 test renders) to confirm overwriting then it can become a nuisance too.

Also, if the plugins adapts an incremental save feature it would start cluttering the directory with 100+ test renders.

__________
IN SUMMARY: my vote goes for "Time delayed incremental save". The user gets to adjust time delay through the plugin.

1. When the time is 0min then this becomes regular incremental save (which saves every render as a new file).
2. When the time is 99999 min, then it behaves is it is currently where only one file is saved overwritting the previous
3. when the time is set to anything else then it starts incremental saving only for renders longer than that time, but overwrites the shorter ones

FOR EXAMPLE:

• ...for any render that has been going more than an hour then Maxwell should add a suffix to the filename. So for the first 59 minutes of the render it starts saving into "Test.tga" and after 60 minutes it switches and saves into "Test-1.tga" (if Test-1.tga already exists from a previous one hour render then increment the filename to Test-2.tga)

This requires a change in the Maxwell core itself (as well as a user time input from the plugins)

[Micha]

I would be very happy about a solution against the overwrite too. Please make it in one of the next releases.

[Thomas An.]

If the plugin keeps asking everytime (for every one of 100 test renders) to confirm overwriting then it can become a nuisance too.

Hey Thomas.... true... but in my world, if i had to do that the first time, i would think i would realize that i'd have to do it 100 more times... and i'd stop it and rename the file sequence....

.... or there could simply be a "over-write all" check box when it asks you the first time.

cheers,
--T13

I am not sure I understand.

What sequence are you refering to ?

[Thomas An.]

oh, I see. No prob.

Yeah, the reasoning is that some people do a lot of short test-renders at very low res. (eg 300x200) as their modeling of a scene progresses. Sometimes it is done to check lighting, colors, placement, textures etc.

...but I agree that some mechanism to preven multi-hour renders from being overwritten accidentally would be nice !

-

[iandavis]

I have previously suggested a system like Lightwave has for objects... save as incremental. Only a checkbox would be enough. Just, save incremental. If on it would save the same 'name' with the addition of "_v001.tga" or some such thing. In this manner for every camera position, colour style, version, whatever, you could do as many test renders as you want, they would be saved in order, automatically named and easy to deal with later.

I do a lot of test renders before committing my machine to do a 12 hour render. the constant renaming get's tiresome.

Also, it would be really nice, since maxwell continuously updates the file, to add "12h53m_13.04" (time/iteration level) to the filename. THAT would be really useful for later.

so to sum up... two checkboxes... both just add stuff to the filename...
box1: on/off - add version tracking to filename
box2: on/off - add time/iterations to filename.

The only potential issue I could see is the size of the filename... so perhaps with any maxwell scene file a small log file could be generated, or am I just missing functionality that already exists. However, I was thinking a log file that is kept as long as the user continues to use the maxwell scene file, all versions of the file and their time/iterations as well as other information like number of emitters, etc. are kept.

cheers

[Thomas An.]

Ian,

Wouldn't this incremental save add clutter to the output directory ? Do we really want to keep every single test-render under the sun ?

[iandavis]

Thomas,

I have over 1 terrabyte of storage. I'm not concerned about that.

the real issue in my mind is having the option. I often make several versions of the same scene, different colours, different lighting, and I manually do what I'm suggesting be an automatic feature... so yeah, some of us want to keep every render.

Besides, I'm more concerned about how huge the scene files are. Medium complexity scenes often exceed 250 MB each... a few dozen 10MB .tga files don't concern me. I am in the habit of keeping everything, it's cheaper then needing it later and not having it.

[big K]

yes i agree. i also keep everything, at least on an actual project. later on when it is going in the archive i delete some of the files i think i won´t need.

but have a look here. this is the rhino plugin from znouza.
http://rhino.plugin.maxwellrender.cz/viewtopic.php?t=3
he has made a fine user interface with good checkboxes concerning this topic here.
unfortunatly i am no rhino user

[Cadhorn]

bump.

cleaning up a bunch of test renders is annoying. accidentally overwriting a looong render is more annoying.

i often set up multiple cameras in maxwell studio, it'd be very handy to be able to assign a different file "save as" name to each camera. this would a) save me time in changing the file name every time i change cameras and do a render. b) stop the tears from flowing when i realize that the gorgeous rendering that i'm currently watching "develop"... has been silently overwriting my last rendering... that was also beautiful.

[KurtS]

Only a checkbox would be enough. Just, save incremental.

I agree - I really miss something like this.