Is it possible to set the START/END parameters in the Render Properties tab “backwards”, with a step of -1 (minus 1), so that files are saved from the end of the animation to the beginning?
This cheezy trick is possible in LW, which makes it easy to set things going on two machines with none of the headaches of setting up a miniscule render farm.
The beauty is, the two machines “meet” whereever they happen to meet, without any handshaking or tricks with stepping. (One of the charms of LW was the ability to insert nonsensical numbers in, like “negative brightness”, which allowed lights to “shine darkness”. Very handy occasionally.)
You should be able to achieve the same thing by enabled placeholder and disabling overwrite. When a rendering instance encounters frames that already exist, it’ll keep looking for frames that haven’t been rendered. Using placeholder makes sure that each instance won’t start rendering the same frame.
This wouldn’t limit the number of machines you can use, unlike that lightwave method.
Just to be clear, and to not sully LW’s reputation:
This was just a VERY quick-and-dirty technique: LW ships with infinite (999) render nodes and has a full blown render controller. But if you only have two machines available, it’s a quick hacky way to get both of them on the same job.
Thanks for the Blender info. I was being dumb about this, and rendering into a local folder AND a cloud folder.
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BUT!: this is a case where it would be better if user parameters were NOT checked to conform with some programmers’ ideas of “what makes sense”. >>Allowing<< users to do ‘crazy’ things is fine if it’s not ‘fatal’, because freedom is better than a straight jacket.
Like “negative brightness”, sometimes nonsensical values are convenient.
A warning might be appropriate, but flat-out disallowing should be as minimal as possible.
Good info! Sometimes the number-checking gets out of hand, and removes options from the animators’ toolkit.
In case anybody’s wondering, this is esp. handy for the corners of ceilings – there’s a small drop-off in light there that is often modeled wrong even w/good renderers. But shine a ‘darklight’ up there, and bob’s yer uncle, more realism.
Usually you can do some wierd stuff with the negative shadows too. Go crazy!
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For the record, I’d still like to be ABLE to render frames ‘backwards’, with a negative step increment.
I was being dumb about this, and rendering into a local folder AND a cloud folder.
Sometimes the number-checking gets out of hand, and removes options from the animators’ toolkit.