Wait until the action is done (in script)

Question

I'm writing a script to make playblast (animation preview) via OpenGL render. I want to start play back rendered frames right after rendering is done. How I can do it? For now my code looks like this =)

#start opengl render
bpy.ops.render.opengl(animation=True)

### TODO: WAIT UNTILL RENDERING IS DONE

#play rendered sequence
bpy.ops.render.play_rendered_anim()

Answer 1

AFAIK Blender still has no built-in facility to do this, without freezing the GUI. I was stuck with that problem before, and the hack I used in a production code is to query render result's filesize through os.stat, and check it at an interval using a TIMER event. If the size is unchanged from previous query, render is considered finished.

Querying filesize only works for video output; for image sequence output, try querying file count in the target directory. And depending on scene complexity, interval might need to be tweaked. Here's a sample code to test with:

import bpy
import os

class VIEW3D_OT_render_and_execute(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Render and Execute"""
    bl_idname = 'view3d.render_and_execute'
    bl_label = 'Render and Execute'
    bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

    prev_stat = None
    timer = None

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'TIMER':
            if not self.prev_stat:
                self.prev_stat = os.stat(context.scene.render.filepath)
                return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

            cur_stat = os.stat(context.scene.render.filepath)
            if self.prev_stat.st_size != cur_stat.st_size:
                self.prev_stat = cur_stat
                return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

            context.window_manager.event_timer_remove(self.timer)

            print("Render finished.") # POST-RENDER CODE HERE
            return {'FINISHED'}

        return {'PASS_THROUGH'}

    def execute(self, context):
        if context.scene.render.image_settings.file_format != 'FFMPEG':
            self.report({'ERROR'}, 'Only works for video output.')
            return {'FINISHED'}

        wm = context.window_manager
        wm.modal_handler_add(self)
        self.timer = wm.event_timer_add(2.0, context.window)
        bpy.ops.render.opengl('INVOKE_DEFAULT', animation=True)

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module(__name__)

register()

I'd be very glad if a cleaner solution is available, but haven't found it so far.