Simple progressive renderer ideas

Hi, as a non python programmery type, I have an idea:

Using python would it be possible to run blender command line on a render multiple times at successively higher resolutions?

The only requirement I see is for the script to check the file size of the outputted render picture to know when to start the next bigger size. And then change the render settings to a higher size and save it, then call blender from command line.

All that it would need is something to show the image in at a constant physical size, even as the resolution increases, so the image quality is upgraded and you can watch one area as it develops.

The progressive rendering is nice because you can leave the computer rendering overnight and not have it finish in 2 hours and waste power on a smaller render or take 15 min too long to ftp it before work.

I am an amateur visual basic programmer, and thus have no idea how this would fit into anything realistically, I just wanted to throw the idea out there. (yep, i have seen worley’s f prime)

Have fun quoting that mess.

Too long to read through? fine. I will shorten it for all of the busy forumers out there. :wink:

I am not sure I get the point. I guess the part I don’t understand is your notion of physical size. From what I know (or think I know) when you render an image, you set the number of pixels.
You can decide to print or display it at a given resolution, but if you want to increase the number of pixels during rendering you are also increasing the physical size. Am I wrong in thinking this?

Maybe if you just explain what problem it is that you are trying to solve?

The progressive rendering is nice because you can leave the computer rendering overnight and not have it finish in 2 hours and waste power on a smaller render, or take 15 min too long to ftp it before work.

It will just keep working as long as you let it.

The physical size issue is not that important, when i edited out the realtime renderer ideas it was left there. But yeah I guess thats called zoom.

Now that I am thinking about it, it wouldn’t need to use the command line, it could just render, and if python is halted when the render starts, once it unfreezes it could start the next bigger size. But I am not sure if python can start a render, in which case the original idea might work. I really just need someone who knows python’s limitations to tell me if this is feasible to try.