I rendered my scene in Cycles and used File Output nodes to render each Render Layer to output to different folders. Later on I had closed and opened Blender and had made changes.
So I swapped the Render Layers for Image input nodes set to ‘sequence’ that pull in all the frames from each folder that I had previously rendered out (as above), and this works in the Image Editor when your scroll along the timeline.
However, the render buttons available to me (‘Animation’ for example) on the Render Properties will start the whole 3D process of rendering off again and all I want to do is render the 2D image inputs and processes that the Compositor sees.
Is there any way to do this from the Compositor or must I now start using the Video Sequence Editor?
If I must use the Video Sequence Editor, then there is a problem with that; the image input nodes of the Compositor puts the images sequences through various effects and filters which are present only in the Compositor are not be rendered in the outputted frames (the outputted frames go through them).
If there isn’t a way to render only the 2D content of the Compositor, then maybe I can input the final output of the Compositor into the Video Editor input?? Thanks
It should only render the compositor when you don’t have any render layer nodes in there. Render properties -> post processing -> compositing should be enabled of course.
This almost worked. It got up to frame 12 of 145 saying ‘Sequence Render’ then you could see the render window frame number count up very quickly to frame 145 but no frames appeared beyond frame 12!!? Any ideas?
I was about to say that the above was solved by ticking ‘Auto-refresh’ on the File Input nodes, because when I ticked them all, the render this time worked. However, to be sure that this was what caused it, I unticked them all again and re-rendered and it STILL worked (maybe the ticking them in the first place cached them all into memory?). Well, the important thing is that it worked but if anyone can explain what caused the problem (if it was 'Auto refresh or not) then I’d be glad to know.
It was a bit of a pain to go round deleting all my Render Layer nodes to do a Compositor-only sequence render, and if you accidentally hit save at some point after deleting them, you can lose them. Is there a way to disable them from rendering without deleting them for situations exactly like mine?
Just create a new scene for rendering the composite-only sequence render. The old scene will still have all your render layers set up so you can go back anytime if needed.
Aha, the cause of the non-rendering frames was because when I was trying to get my first issue (top) to work, I had inadvertently dragged a scene strip onto the Video Editor out of synch then forgot about it - so I can do what I wanted to do now thanks.
The only question that remains is one of convenience as above:
“It was a bit of a pain to go round deleting all my Render Layer nodes to do a Compositor-only sequence render, and if you accidentally hit save at some point after deleting them, you can lose them. Is there a way to disable them from rendering without deleting them for situations exactly like mine?”
Should see the .blend file to find out what is wrong but you might have some setting keyframed there, or the image filenames in the sequence doesn’t have continuously growing number in them, or start and end frames don’t match to with the sequence and the offset is not set right.
Anyway, forgot to mention that it is possible to feed compositor output to the VSE using scene strip. But I don’t think it would help to add another processing step when you already have a problem with it.
The first issue is now solved, all that remains is a related question:
“It was a bit of a pain to go round deleting all my Render Layer nodes to do a Compositor-only sequence render, and if you accidentally hit save at some point after deleting them, you can lose them. Is there a way to disable them from rendering without deleting them for situations exactly like mine?”
I am now also curious about how to feed the compositor output into the VSE as you mentioned - can you explain please?
You could create another scene for compositing from the top header. You could make it a empty scene (although you need to create camera in there or Blender refuses to render) while the original scene stays intact. You could also use another file for compositing.
Sure. A screenshot spares me from writing too much
In this I have only a camera in the scene. I’ve brought in a image sequence in the compositor and changed its tint to green. I then added a scene strip in the VSE (shift+A -> Scene -> Scene). Then, added a color effect strip on top of it to color that red from the frame 27 onwards. The rendered result is that frame 14 has a green tint and frame 65 is red.
There was some problem with the VSE preview though. Not sure what’s going on there.
