Playblast is overwriting previously rendered files… 🙈😭

[Markus Schille]

Ok, I discovered something today (and I’m quite new to rendering in Blender). 
I have rendered a long animation to EXR files, but then I made some small adjustments at the end and wanted to create a ‘playblast’, but it used the same output folder and file format, so it overwrites the EXR files I have rendered (which took several hours).
Shouldn’t there be a separate output folder/file setting for playblasts? I don’t typically want EXR for playblasts, but changing output settings is easy to forget.

There is an option to not overwrite files, but what does it do if you create a long cycles render? Does it give a warning or does it render (for hours) without saving? Do you have any experience or tips?

Is there any way to handle this better, built in workflows, or addons? 

[Martin Bergwerf]

HI Markus,

This is how we learn😉

If you disable Overwrite, Blender will not Render the Image Sequence, if it’s already Rendered in the Output Folder, so you won’t lose anything.

You’ll have to pay attention when Rendering and it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the first few Frames, to see if everything goes as planned.

Blender does exactly what you tell it to do, so you’ll have to be careful with what you ask. 

There might be Addons that do what you want, but I don’t know if and which.

[Omar Domenech]

Yeah stuff like this happens a lot, not only when rendering, but in like every stage of the pipeline and no matter the 3D package, it’s just that these software’s are so huge and have so many functionalities, it’s hard to keep safeguards everywhere, so it’s most of the time on us to be mindful of things. As Martin said, we learn the hard way. 

[Markus Schille]

Coming from a 3dsmax background, I’m used playblast (aka viewport render) having completely separate output settings for saving files, and I was surprised by this difference in workflow I guess.

Sure, every 3D software has it’s own pitfalls. I guess the important thing is to learn good practices and workflows, so I’m curious how the Blender Pros are doing it? I guess one way you could set it up is duplicating your Blender scene with everyting instanced, call the new one “Playblast”, and just have different outputs: exr for renders, and MP4 for playblasts?

I also saw some addons out there. There is one called DuBlast specifically for handling playblasts, but I haven’t tried it. And there are addons for dealing with rendering output like this one: https://github.com/jeinselen/Blender-RenderKit

Thanks! 😊

[Omar Domenech]

Maybe you can take advantage of the file output node? I remember in this old tutorial, the teacher uses it to get around a similar issue if I remember correctly. You can check it out:

https://cgcookie.com/lessons/pre-compositing

[Martin Bergwerf]

The problem you had, was that you Rendered the Playblast as .EXR files and those were already there, that’s why they got overwritten.

If you’d have changed the Output Format to .PNG, JPEG, MP4, or so for the Playblast, you’d be fine.

   “…changing Output Settings is easy to forget…”

You’ll learn to remember.

[Omar Domenech]

Yeah in the end is a getting used to it more than anything. People who know coding could implement a technical solution into these kind of Blender stuff. So as you already searched, there might be more addons out there. 

[Dwayne Savage]

The method I’ve seen is to change the output path. The playblast output is set in the shots blend file. Then you use background/command line rendering either manually or thru batch script to do final renders. Side note: the option is

-o or –render-output 

Followed by path and file name. No space in the path or file name. Use. Double forward slash(//) at the beginning to denote relative to blend file. Additional note: Blender options are case sensitive. So O is different than o. 

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