Batch GUI Tool for Windows

Thanks very much for the detailed answer and explaining it well, now I understand and will try to do it as you have put here

That is a very hypnotic animation...
The animated gif part in the batch tool is created with an old open-source program. I don't think it has any optimalisation, it works, never looked into the code just legally "borrowed" it. It is good to know that GIMP makes "smaller" animated gifs.

Hi Tuxmask75,
it is difficult to guess why the program does not work on your PC. FF4 + FF5 is ok, Windows 10 is ok. You could try to delete all files in the appdata directory, that looks like:
C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Filter Forge BatchTool\..
The batch program should create a Settings.xml file in that directory. If deleting all files in that directory doesn't work, than you can send me your Settings.xml file
In the case of FF5 the Settings.xml should have the entries:

Code
<FFexecFilePath>C:\Program Files (x86)\Filter Forge 5\Bin\FFXCmdRenderer-x86.exe</FFexecFilePath>   <FFVersion>Filter Forge 5</FFVersion> and   <userStoragesXmlFilePath>C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Filter Forge 5\System\UserStorages.xml</userStoragesXmlFilePath>   <positionsXmlFilePath>C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Filter Forge 5\System\Positions.xml</positionsXmlFilePath>

Hope this helps

Okay so yeah, I installed Filterforge 5.007 and than updated to 5.009 on another computer ( my laptop) , and tried the batch tool and it does the same thing. in addition: its now saying that it can't find FF4 components installed in 2 separate pop up warning windows.

Hmm,, yeah I installed it with default everything on the laptop.
it seems that the settings.xml is not generating at all. unless its generating in some other areas other than: C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Filter Forge BatchTool\

Okay so I got the BatchTool to work on the laptop, and than the desktop !
Here's what I did ,,, I installed Filter Forge 4 after Filter Forge 5 and the tool booted up. I changed the preferences to FF5 within the batch tool.

I than copied the settings file from C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Filter Forge BatchTool\.. from the laptop to the desktop and it worked.

Recap!
On the desktop I already had FF4 and FF5 installed but the tool did not want to generate any settings file.
On the laptop FF5 was the only app installed( and the Batch tool didn't care), but when FF4 was installed after FF5, the tool seemed to like that for some odd reason.

I really love the batch tool ! Its a real life savor ! I really wish that FF would include a batch tool with such a nice user friendly interface as part of FilterForge's main interface to batch filters! (the FF batch scripting is nice and all but I think a lot of us art guys don't care much for coding)

I'm wondering, is there any way to have multiple output directories ?

So I could batch multi filters at once.

Much searching found me this tool and thanks heaps.

However I had a similar issue to Tuxmask75 Personally FF5 is my first product so no ff4 files on my machine.

I tried to launch FFbatch tool a couple of times and it kept on crashing after looking for C:\Users\Alec Baldwin\AppData\Roaming\Filter Forge 4\System\Library (yes Alec Baldwin)
and C:\Users\Alec Baldwin\AppData\Roaming\Filter Forge 4\bin\FFXCmdRenderer-x86.exe.

Solution manually create the Filter Forge 4\system\library dir
and
manually create the Filter Forge 4/bin dir and copy the cmdrenderer from ff5 into it.

ffbatch tool only seamed to want to see the ff4 dir and exe path on first boot and then you can change the version.

I had to go this route because I couldn't find a ff4 demo to install

Hi there !

first thanks you Aba for your batch tool, it's working really great ! I've used it to batch render Rendered 3D image sequence of more than 1300 images, and it did during the night without a bug, a crash or anything, works perfect !

However I'm trying to do a simple thing, and didn't find a way yet to do it :

I use a filter called "Paint HDRist" by lipebianc, and in this filter, there is a bomber node.
I added a intSlider to the variation Pin, and I was wondering if it was possible to render each image of my sequence with a different/random value for this IntSlider Parameter using the batch tool ?

I've seen that it's possible to render all values of the intSlider for each image (so rendering 100 duplicata of each image with a different intSlider value for each one if the intSlider have value from 0 to 99 for example). But is it possible, instead, to render each image just once but with a different/random value of the IntSlider for each image, in other words, to "animate/randomize" the intSlider value along the image sequence rendering process?

Hi !

thanks for your answer

That's exactly what i'm trying to do, but I didn't find anyway or any node that have a grey (single value) output to connect to the variation pin (Actually I'm trying to connect something to the variation pin of bomber node and a perlin noise node).

It seems that all FF nodes outputs are only green "type", there is nothing to export values read from an input image (like average R, V or B values, or even image size in pixels, or anything) there is nothing provided to store a numeric value somewh ere in the "blueprint".

should I look at scripting inside FF or is this a dead end for this matter ?

However I looked into scripting in FF, and find out that (If i'm not wrong) I can't even create a simple script to output random values (within a defined range for example using Math.random and so on)
because I can only create script nodes that output Curves and Map, not Values ? that's weird... as it's really basic.

Did I missed something ?

Hi !

thanks for your advices !

I've tried a lot around the "green" inputs of the bomber, but definitly the best result in animated sequence (to prevent simulate a frame by frame drawn/paint animated sequence) is to manipulate the variation parameter (of the bomber and perlin noise) on each rendered image (this way the bomber refresh its pattern each frame, and the noises doesn't stay static, evn offseting them isn't that nice to see on animated frames) -> variation is the best way. And also, trying to simulate seed randomness with green inputs maybe can work, but It's not very efficient for rendertime, compared to just refreshing/randomizing seeds/variation.

I found maybe another workaround for this matter (doesn't work currently) but may be the easiest way.

It's to play with the randomizer function of FF inside your batch tool.
I create an intSlider connected to the Bomber and perlin noise variation pin (to create a parameter in the filter parameter list)
Then lock every other parameters to prevent them to being randomized by the randomizer and then come the Batch tool -> would it be possible to make it "hit" randomize (or run it) each time it render a new image ?

Of course the easiest way would be to modify the IntSlider Control node, and replace the user controlled value by a Math.random function, but FF doesn't seems to be oriented this way.
I'm still pretty surprised that FF value component are that restricted, I use often VVVV, pure data, and the Xpresso interface within C4d (even a bit of the UE4 blueprint interface) all of them are node system too, and provides those simple math nodes, that are really basic and very useful.

okay, i'll do that ! thanks for your help

Hi, SpaceRay. Please try this new link to download the batchtool. I did not have the time to make a new version, so nothing has changed, but the old link will not work anymore.

I hope this link works: FFBatchTool (zip in DropBox)

Hi Mizawa90
You could try FFBatchTool in DropBox. Something has changed with public folders in Dropbox, I hope this will work.

I don't think there are active users of this tool left and I don't have the licence for the latest FF version, so I don't plan to update my program. But you can try it if you like. Have fun with it

Hi Mascarponi, are you still using FF 4 and/or 5? Do you use the standard install of filterforge (not installing on other drives/folders)?

You will find a new version for the batchtool that will only work with FF5 in this link: BatchTool v1.1 (only for FF5)

I hope it resolves the bug that Tuxmask75 found.

I'm still using the FilterForge 4 version, it's installed in the standard folder; C:\Program Files (x86)

I'd like to try the new version, but unfortunately i don't have FF5.
Is there a way to make it run with FF4, or a way to run the old batchtool properly?
I recently got a Windows crash log, would this be of any help?

Is there an easy way to update from FF4 to FF5?
I'd like to update to 6 also, but if the batchtool doesn't work with it, it don't see a good reason..

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aba wrote: the latest version is FF6 and the tool won't certainly work with FF6 (maybe until I found a sponsor)

I still have plenty to help in that area.... ..All in the name of progress...
Sent you a mail..

Nice, we'll be waiting patiently

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aba wrote: The batchtool for FF6 (only the 64bits version) is downloadable from my dropbox: FFBatchTool v1.2 for FF6-x64 And thanks again to CFandM who made this possible!

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Tuxmask75 wrote: Thaks CFandM and ada! You both kick so much ass !