Logging renders?

Question

Is there a simple way to log/save every render that you make in a Blender scene? Maybe an add-on? This would be helpful to visually see progress on modeling, materials, lighting, and whatnot. It would also be helpful if it could "print on" the date/time, vertex count, and the camera settings. Am I just dreaming or is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

The closest thing to logging a render in Blender is to render to different slots. Each slot can store a different render for comparisons etc. In the Image Editor, there is a popup menu in the header that has 8 different slots that you can render to. Before rendering, choose a slot. ( You can also quickly cycle through these by using AltJ for the previous render slot and J for next render slot.)

As for the second part, there is a Stamp pane in the Render tab that you can use to attach the date, time and render time etc to your render.

Answer 2

You can have Blender automatically save files if you check the Auto Save checkbox in the render settings.

Renders will automatically be saved to *blendfile location*/auto_save/. If you check subfolders renders will be saved to: *blendfile location*/auto_save/*blendfile name*/(useful if you have multiple .blend files saved in the same directory)

Since it uses the location of the .blend file as a base, you must save your file before this feature can work.

It is an addon, so make sure to enable it in the settings:

Answer 3

I had a similar need before and I did a test. By making use of the handlers (bpy.app.handlers), once can define render_pre, render_post, render_complete callbacks on render (bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(preRenderFunc), etc.,).

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

@persistent
def PostLoadSession(self):
    print("post load")
    scene = bpy.context.scene
    srrid = 'srrid'
    if srrid not in scene or not scene[srrid]:
        print("Nothing was rendered previously")
    else:
        print('Last image rendered was {0}.{1}.png'.format('RenderResult' ,scene[srrid]))

bpy.app.handlers.load_post.append(PostLoadSession)

@persistent
def PreRender(self):
    print("pre render")
    scene = bpy.context.scene
    srrid = 'srrid'
    if srrid not in scene:
        print('This is the first time you are rendering from this file')
        scene[srrid] = 0
        print('Created {0}'.format(srrid)) 

bpy.app.handlers.render_pre.append(PreRender)

@persistent
def PostRender(self):
    print("post render")
    scene = bpy.context.scene
    srrid = 'srrid'
    if srrid not in scene:
        print('PreRender was not called')
    else:
        scene[srrid] += 1
        print('Saved render result as {0}.{1}.png'.format('RenderResult', scene[srrid])) 

bpy.app.handlers.render_complete.append(PostRender)

You can find more details on my blog post.

http://learningblender3dsoftware.blogspot.in/2012/10/messing-around-with-prepost-handlers.html

The code available on my blog does not actually save the images yet, but it can be easily achievable. I am actually in the process of creating an add-on that saves the images. I hope to release a beta version soon.