Mandelbulber2 RoyalRender submitter

Setup

• Copy contents of render_apps folder into RR installation directory.
• Copy 3D20__Mandelbulber.py from submitter_sceneparser into plugins64\submitter_sceneparser inside of RR directory
• Put Mandelbulber2 standalone version on a network share (e.g. \\share\renderers\Mandelbulber\mandelbulber_* where * is version, like 2.14 or 2.15..)
  • Set ExeCopyFromDir in render_apps/_config/3D20__Mandelbulber__inhouse.inc to that location
    • e.g.

       ExeCopyFromDir = \\share\renderers\Mandelbulber
      

• Put your Mandelbulber2 configuration file on a network share (e.g. \\share\renderers\Mandelbulber\config\mandelbulber_*.ini, you can find it after first local run of Mandelbulber2 in C:\Users\<user>\mandelbulber\mandelbulber_*.ini)
  • Make sure that <rrLocalBin>rrCopy -oa "\\share\renderers\Mandelbulber\config\mandelbulber_<rrJobVersionMajor><rrJobVersionMinor>.ini" line in submitters config files (3D20_Mandelbulber_*.cfg) is pointing to the location of your config file
• Optionally you can create a launcher for submitting your Mandelbulber2 scenes:
  • Create a shortcut from render_apps\_submitplugins\rrSubmit_Mandelbulber.bat, set its icon to Mandelbulber.ico in the same folder
  • Enable drag & drop for your launcher by modifying settings of the shortcut:
    • Change target from S:\my_project\mandelbulber2_rr_submitter\render_apps\_submitplugins\rrSubmit_Mandelbulber.bat to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "S:\my_project\mandelbulber2_rr_submitter\render_apps\_submitplugins\rrSubmit_Mandelbulber.bat"
    • Source

Usage

• Automatic way
  • Open your .fract file with rrSubmitter, this will automatically set your render output path, renderer, version, frame range, etc.
    • Or alternatively you can drag & drop your .fract file on rrSubmit_Mandelbulber_2_15.bat launcher
• Manual way (all those steps are now automated with RR scene parser for Mandelbulber2 files, but I kept them here for reference)
  • Load .fract settings file
  • Set Software to Mandelbulber
  • Set Mandelbulber version as needed
  • Set Renderer to Flight / Keyframe / Static
  • Set Sequence Start, End range - starting from zero and end range - 1
  • Set Image Dir
    • Animation - set it to the same value as in Mandelbulber, Mandelbulber ignores this setting, it is only for RR to check if frames exist
      • For example you can set it to <SceneFolder>\<Scene>_render
      • If you follow this convention for setting output path in Mandelbulber, then you don't need to change it
      • e.g. if your .fract file is in this location: \\path\to\scene\my_scene.fract , then Image Dir will expand to \\path\to\scene\my_scene_render\
    • Static frame - Mandelbulber will render into the specified path
      • Set Image Dir, FileName to arbitrary path, check Single output file (.avi, .mov), include extension in FileName
      • Set Sequence Start, End range to zero
  • Set FileName to frame_#######
    • This value seems to be hardcoded somewhere in Mandelbulber
  • Set Ext (based on your Mandelbulber2 global config file):
    • jpg - JPEG format (default)
    • png - PNG format
    • png16 - 16-bit PNG format
    • png16alpha - 16-bit PNG with alpha channel format
    • exr - EXR format
    • tiff - TIFF format

Notes

• Animation
  • Rendering of the last frame (in batch of 1 frame) doesn't work, it works fine if the last frame is in a larger batch
• Scene parser
  • Seqence start is assumed to be 0
  • If both Keyframe and Flight output directories are set, Keyframe (directory and renderer) is used
• Output format is set globally in Mandelbulber2 configuration file. Keys in the config are flight_animation_image_type, keyframe_animation_image_type and queue_image_format