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Batch Rendering On Mac

June 4th, 2010

Well, as we have figured out how to perform batch rendering on Windows, let’s switch to the land of Mac. Some things are a bit easier there, others are harder, but everything is possible, no doubt :)

Single project, multiple images

The idea is quite simple: you’ve got a project and a good deal of images you want to render. Do the following:

  1. Create a “batch” folder, for example at the desktop
  2. Go there and create two subfolders: “images” and “out”
  3. Put your images to the “images” folder. Make sure that they have the same type (i.e. JPEG or PNG)
  4. Put the project file to the “batch” folder.
  5. Download this script and put it to the “batch” folder as well

Now open the script and look to its first lines. You will see names of folders and default extension to search for. Correct those lines if you have other input data. Then run the script. Box Shot 3D should be launched for every image in the “images” folder, it should render the scene and save the result to the “out” folder.

As in Windows examples, I suggest to set the lowest possible quality to speed up the first rendering. When you see that everything goes right, you may comment out that line at the bottom of the script.

It is not a big problem to extend this script by adding separate folders for front and left sides and use images with the same names for different sides of the same object.

Multiple projects

Another method that some of you may found easier, is to perform batch rendering for several different projects. You may create and test some projects in low resolution and quality, then put them all to a folder and perform a batch rendering while you sleep. Do the following:

  1. Create another folder, for example “batch2″
  2. Create two subfolders: “projects” and “out”
  3. Download another script to the “batch2″ folder

Open the script and correct its first lines if necessary. Perhaps, you may want to define another extension. Then save it. Now you are ready to put some projects.

Important note: Box Shot 3D uses relative paths when saves projects, so it may not be enough to just copy a project to the “projects” folder, because it may break paths to images. You’d better open each project in Box Shot 3D and save it to the “projects” folder. Another method is to keep images in the same folder with project and copy them all to the “projects” folder. This will work as well.

When you put some projects to the “projects” folder, open and run the script. Box Shot 3D should be started for every project and resulting images should be written to the “out” folder.

Other possibilities

AppleScript is a powerful thing that allows to make quite complex batch files, hot folders and so on. As I am not an AppleScript-guru, I’ve just shown two cases that can be used most often. Feel free to share your experience and submit your own solutions that others may find helpful.

That’s all for now :)

Your Comments:

1. Glenboid
June 5th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
 

WOW Vitaly, this is very useful, I have a job coming up where this will save me a bunch of time!

Thanks!

2. Nicom  [+]
June 5th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
 

Hi….
When i’m render on Mac with turn on transparent in “Background Mode” the app are freeze.

What i’m doing wrong?

3. Vitaly [Box Shot 3D]  [+]
June 5th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
 

Glenboid, please let me know if you will have any problems with the scripts.

Nicom, there is a “Send feedback” option in the Help menu. Click it and put your e-mail, so I can track your report. I’ll take a look and reply with advice.

4. Glenboid
June 5th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
 

Hi Vitaly,

Just tried 3 test CDs (I have never used these, I deliberately chose these as I wanted to be unfamiliar with some of the settings) everything worked perfectly first time!

Love it, this is going to save me a lot of time in the future!

Many many thanks for this!!

5. Bart Beeckmans
June 6th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
 

Great idea. I am going to try this asap!
Thanks for this effort,
Bart

6. Bart Beeckmans
June 9th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
 

Strange, the first batch script does not replace the original image with my jpg’s? It does make the correct amount of packshots but all with the default images on the packshot.

Can you help me please,
Bart

7. Vitaly [Box Shot 3D]  [+]
June 9th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
 

Bart Beeckmans, perhaps your shape doesn’t have a side with the name “Front”. At the bottom of the script you may see the following line:

set image aSrc for side “Front”

It assigns your JPEG to the side with name “Front”. However, for example, in DVD Box shape there is no such side and you should use “Cover Front” instead.

You may find the names of sides on the “Images” page.

Please let me know if this doesn’t help.

8. Bart Beeckmans
June 9th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
 

Great it works!
I overlooked this variable.
Sorry;-)

9. All Marketing
June 16th, 2010 at 3:41 am
 

Thanks for your free software.

10. Stasys
June 17th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
 

Excellent
Your advice will save lots of time. How to add to script additional lines :
a different format for all images in the folder images such as jpg, gif, to replace to jpg?

11. Vitaly [Box Shot 3D]  [+]
June 17th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
 

Stasys , do you want to render all JPEG and GIF files together? The script filters a single extension only, so if you need to filter two extensions, you need to do the following:

Find the line:
if the name extension of the aFile is anImagesExt then

and change it to:
if the name extension of the aFile is anImagesExt or the name extension of the aFile is “gif” then

This is just a quick idea. The better way is to move extension to a variable and then compare it with the list of extensions.

Actually, the best idea is to convert images to the same format :)

12. Stasys
June 17th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
 

Everything works fine. Thank you :)

13. Chris
August 6th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
 

Hi, thanks for the script, can you suggest why am i getting noisy/grainy shadow when batch rendering? is there any fix for it?

14. Vitaly [Box Shot 3D]  [+]
August 6th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
 

Chris, replace 1 with 50 in the line “set target quality to 1″

15. Chris
August 6th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
 

perfect, many thanks. :)

16. Stasys
November 11th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
 

I want to ask again about batch script. In my project is set that picture backgruond is transparent, but when I use your script, backgruond becomes white …

17. Th:)mmes
October 2nd, 2011 at 11:13 am
 

I want to second what Stasys said. Is it possible to save to png? This would be VERY handy. Thanks in advance.

T

18. Th:)mmes
October 2nd, 2011 at 1:25 pm
 

Wow. This script thing is fantastic. Just change the jpg to png in the script. Then send png images into the script, and out comes – VOILA – png with alphachannel transparent backgrounds. Thank you so much for creating the framework for us with this script. Very much appreciated. T

19. DaanZ
January 9th, 2012 at 5:54 pm
 

Great script, could save me a lot of time rendering 3D bookcovers. I have just one problem: I only have images for the cover! If I use your script the ‘fit shape to images’ command makes my books look weird. I would like to use the Quick crop command ‘crop nothing’ and just use the standard shape. Is this possible? I tried to edit the script using the command ‘crop nothing’ but when compiling I get syntax error (expected line end but found identifier).
DaanZ

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