Any way to animate a batch process of FF?

I can't get FF to work with the latest Photoshop Cloud (2015) but in any case I'm not sure I can do what I want even if it did.

What I really need is to take, say, a few hundred different images of an animation and apply a variation of a filter to each one. I can't just use the same filter, or the final effect won't look hand drawn (instead it would look as if the animation is just viewed through a filter).

Ideally what I'd like is to just use the same filter for each image but change the variation factor by 1 -- something like "Variation = Variation + frame number". Is this even possible with DOS commands?

I can't use the GUI developed by another user here, since it won't do this, and I kind of doubt whether PS integration would allow it either (it might, but it doesn't look like you can pass any parameters to FF from PS).

Anyone have any clue? (Too bad FF itself doesn't have a batch process available, as that would be ideal).

I don't see anywhere in the command line format where you can specify a SERIES of images with a varying filter each time, only a single one. The problem is not only do you need to give it a different image each time, you need to vary the filter.

I suspect the command line might offer the possibility to process a number of images using a wildcard (like the old * used to do in DOS) but each image would use the same filter settings. As I said above, what needs to happen for a hand drawn look is for the filter to vary just a bit between images, otherwise the overall effect is just to overlay a filter on top of the animation.

Even if you could just pass a parm that advanced the "variation" parameter by 1 (or by time, or something to make it move) that would work, as long as you could pass it the series of images and it knew enough to vary it for each image. But the GUI batch interface I tried (which I assume uses your own commands) seems limited by the same problem -- it can only process a series of images using the same filter each time (when I tried using variations it tried to process EACH image with the variations, so that a series of 100 images process by two variations became 200 images -- and trying 100 variations as I would need produced 10,000 images! No way THAT would be practical even if I could discard the 9,900 images I didn't need afterwards).

I'm kind of amazed this need has never been expressed before, but it's undoubtably why your program doesn't appeal to 2D animators (it's very useful for textures for 3D, and still artists can obviously use it). If you had this feature I could sell a TON of copies of it (I run one of the more popular 2D animation forums and I couldn't get anyone interested in it even at 80% off, due to this limitation).

I could show you the difference between what you can do presently and what I'd like but it would take a LOT of time for me to even render a simple animation by hand this way. But if you need to see it I'd be willing to make the effort (I'd have to feed 150 images one at a time into the program and change the parms each time just so you could see 5 seconds of animation -- I guess I can do this but what a PITA it would be to prove my point).

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where you can specify a SERIES of images with a varying filter each time

I'm not sure I understand you correctly but the batch renderer allows you to specify any number of images or filters. Assume you have source images 1.jpg, 2.jpg and 3.jpg that need to be processed with filters 1.ffxml, 2.ffxml and 3.ffxml, then you'll need a task file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Tasks>
<Task>
<Image value="D:\Source\1.jpg" width="300" height="400" />
<Selection value="" />
<Result path="D:\Target\1.jpg" />
<Filter value="C:\Filters\1.ffxml" />
<Preset value="0" />
</Task>
<Task>
<Image value="D:\Source\2.jpg" width="300" height="400" />
<Selection value="" />
<Result path="D:\Target\2.jpg" />
<Filter value="C:\Filters\2.ffxml" />
<Preset value="0" />
</Task>
<Task>
<Image value="D:\Source\3.jpg" width="300" height="400" />
<Selection value="" />
<Result path="D:\Target\3.jpg" />
<Filter value="C:\Filters\3.ffxml" />
<Preset value="0" />
</Task>
</Tasks>

If you have 3000 images to process instead of 3, then you'll need some tool to automate creation of the task file according to the above pattern. Basically it comes down to search and replace: if you're an experienced coder it should be a fairly easy task.

Well, I'd need to create about 300 presets in order to be able to even render a 10 second animation, so that's pretty impractical. And remember, this is just for one filter (so to use each one I'd spend, well, an insane amount of time with presets).

This is what computers do best -- automating what is essentially an idiot process. If you can't pass a parm to a filter that just alters your variations, then there is something broken with Filter Forge, because that's just something that ought to be available. In the same manner, if you can't just pass a directory of images in one pass to your program, you are missing out on a ton of folks who could use this.

As a programmer I could do a whole LOT of things that might even automate this to some degree (even including the obnoxious task of automating the keystrokes required) but you aren't going to sell FF to a lot of programmers, nor would what I construct be useable by many others. If your OWN coders can't make this happen you need to hire some new ones, because this is a pretty simple internal thing to accomodate.

Hey, hire me if you want -- no, wait, you actually can't afford me (I'm a retired IT chief who LIKES his retirement).

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in the "SettingsOverride" category there is a Variation value

You're almost there. Variation is stored per preset, not per filter. Every preset has a Settings tag that looks like this:

<Settings size_factor="1" variation="10654" seamless="false" antialiasing="2" map_type="0" edges_only="true" clip_hdr_for_result="true"/>

This is the variation you need, you can programmatically set any value from 1 to 30000 by means of LUA, or Powershell or whatever.

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Kelleytoons Really a LOT of work to set this up for what should be internal

I really agree with you that is a LOT of work to use the command line renderer and also think that now for FF 5 this should be inside internally of FF itself

And another problem of using the command line render, apart that is complex to do and configure and is all command based, is that it does not have obviously the ability to have a PREVIEW of the result

I don't mind the command line renderer, IF it had enough options to actually process correctly. Most CLRs will batch process -- the one in FF won't (at least not a series of images -- you can set it up with one image and a number of variations). It also won't allow you to mode the filter you pass it -- again, a very basic parm that would allow folks who animate to actually use this program.

As it stands it's very useful to generate 3D textures but for use with actual animation programs it just can't work properly.

Uhh well, you gotta make an whole set of features and test that constantly. Pretty sure that's gonna take time.

[deleted] Okay, so I saw you saw the Batch tool already...

I think the whole premise of the discussion above falls on assumptions about the development of the program, which we don't know anything about. Pretty sure there are a gajillion other things to consider when it comes to software of this complexity; how do you work-in the UI, how do you integrate it with Photoshop or can you even, what other cool things can we do with it... etc.

It should also be noted that software companies don't usually openly discuss what they're developing right now. You don't want to make empty promises basically.

So I doubt it's fallen on deaf ears. It's a highly requested feature, it's been posted for almost 2 or 3 versions. The situation is more like we don't have information on whether if it's in development or not. We have no idea what's going on until it's announced.

Not denying the awesomeness of the feature request. Just thinking the forums sometimes we end up talking assumption on these forums.

Right maybe FF needs to communicate with its users a lot more often. Needs hugs.

My newly released tool, revealed at yon post:

https://filterforge.com/forum/read.php?FID=5&TID=13617

--accomplishes this task (which I have also wanted done), including courtesy of the nudge in the right direction offered by GMM in this thread.