Time Stamp

[dorianvan]

It would be handy to have a way to enable a time stamp on the rendered image. Maybe there is a way already and I don't know how.

[Oshyan]

I'm in favor of a general log output option to be added some time in the future. Nobody has suggested an actual timestamp embedded in the image before, that seems rather destructive to the underlying render. Would a log file saved with the image work for your needs?

- Oshyan

[jaf]

Yes, the log file would be great.  Date, time, pixel size, population data.... the stuff that gets calculated for the render anyway.  Maybe optional, probably from the render panel for those who have no need for it.

This would also be nice for those quick scenes made for the forum (to paste the information into the thread.)  In fact, maybe a small information or notes field.

Actually, maybe a better idea is to expand the already available "Project Settings" in the lower left corner of the screen with data mentioned above.  A small checkbox called "write to a file" using the scene name/path .log or .txt. 

[edit]  I should have added... I know the Project Settings is primarily meant for the animation version, but there seems to be no reason it couldn't be used for stills (expanded as I mentioned above.)  Also, I would not be in favor of anything "rendered in", like watermarks, to the image file.  This can be accomplished with many graphics programs like Photoshop or specialty watermark software.

[dorianvan]

It's not destructive to me for test images, it could be a small corner thing. I like to scrub through tests and see rendering times from Vray outputs. It can be very useful since rendering time is such a big thing. So an on/off switch for a time stamp would be helpful. However, a log file might even be nicer; especially if you can choose from a wide range of information (like detail, AA, atmosphere, etc); so you have the image along with whatever information you chose, that created that image.

[jaf]

In many respects, there's already a log file -- it's the tgd file itself.  It is readable in a text editor.  However, with large scenes, the tgd is large and a bit difficult to break out the information you may want. 

A xml parser will work, but there are some pieces of information that are not stored in the tgd (like population instances.)  These are calculated before rendering or by forcing an update.  It seems this information could be written to a log file or the tgd file rather easily (I know, easy for me to say.)

You can create a 3D text as an object and render it into the scene as a watermark. 

[Oshyan]

You can also just use tgdcli.exe and pipe the output to a text file. Very verbose, but it's available now.

- Oshyan

[dorianvan]

It would really be nice to have either a watermark at the bottom that occurs post render or a small text file that you have the option to save along side the image. I do a lot of tweaking and rendering, that includes stepping back; so I currently have to save a separate tgd file (good thing they are not too big!), to keep the settings in mind. With an image w/watermark or an image along with a text file, it could make reviewing images and settings much quicker. Just my opinion though.

Edit: Oshyan, I opened the tgdcli.exe file and it opened a new TG3 window. One, how do you access this for a file that is currently being worked on? Two, I don't see any settings in it, is there some function you have to type in to see these?

[Oshyan]

tgdcli.exe is just a different way of running TG, with a commandline window. It isn't going to help with a "file that is currently being worked on"; you would have to close the original instance and open tgdcli then open your TGD there. There are also no settings, it's literally just a window that shows what's going on behind the scenes. If you want to pipe it to a file I believe you can do so by *first* opening the actual OS commandline (e.g. cmd.exe on Windows), then starting tgdcli.exe from there with the command to pipe output to txt file. I honestly haven't done it myself so unless you understand how to pipe console output in general to a text file, you'll need to look it up separately, it's a general function not specific to TG.

- Oshyan