Batch rendering would be possible with the addition of two dropdowns in the render layers node

Would be awesome if the render layers node in the compositor had a dropdown listing all cameras available in the selected scene/viewlayer, this way you could batch render just by setting up multiple render layer nodes in the compositor, each connected to a file output node.

A frame range dropdown in the render layers node would enable full batch rendering when combined with the ability to select a camera.

Next level would be a file input in the render layers node, this way you wouldn’t be limited to rendering and compositing only the current .blend file.

If I’m being really cheeky, I’d also like to see the option to have multiple compositors per scene, like you can have multiple worlds per scene. It’s not really a problem, currently I just create a new scene per compositor, but I think it would be neater.

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Yes! That would be awesome, however there are a few problems with this. First I think it would be more complex to implement then just two more drop-downs. The render-layers node just takes the raw render result from blender. This means that for multiple cameras, blender would have to render from each camera in the scene or be able to detect when each camera is needed. At this point we are talking about more than just two drop-downs in the render-layers node. Second there is already a file input, kind of. You can input an image, image-sequence and a movie-clip. That said I do like the idea, and having multiple compositors per scene would be cool, however suggestions like this are probably better for Right-Click Select.

Hey RestonStanton, each render layer produces a new raw render, so that shouldn’t be an issue. I’m actually already using the compositor for batch rendering, but currently if I want multiple cameras I have to set up multiple scenes and then in the empty scene which just holds the compositor I specify scenes instead of cameras in the render layers scene dropdowns.

It works great, but it’s a bit messy compared to having a dropdown instead of multiple scenes.

I did not know that, cool. :grinning: You still have the issue of Blender needing to calculate when to render each camera though, but a frame drop down could fix that.

Not sure if this will help, but using a Time node, two math nodes, two value nodes, and a mix node you can create a transition similar something a frame drop-down box would do.


Also, there is a compositor improvements thread here: Compositor improvements

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Hey RestonStanton, that’s genius, nice setup :slight_smile: Although the problem with that is it will always render all render layers for every frame, whereas with a dropdown a render layers node would never be rendering a frame it didn’t need to.