Photon-v2 comes with an application called PhotonCLI, which is a command-line interface of the render engine. Command-line interface can come in handy if you are batch rendering or using it on a remote server. It also, in theory, offers slightly better performance in terms of render time. This is a documentation of available options and some examples. Check out PhotonStudio if you are more interested in using a GUI.
Available Options
| Options | Effects |
|---|---|
-s <path> |
Specify path to scene file. To render an image series, you can specify "myScene*.p2" as <path> where * is a wildcard for any string (--series is required in this case). (default path: "./scene.p2") |
-o <path> |
Specify image output path. This should be a filename for single image and a directory for image series. (default path: "./rendered_scene.png") |
-of <format> |
Specify the format of output image. Supported formats are: png, jpg, bmp, tga, hdr, exr. If this option is omitted, format is deduced from filename extension. |
-t <number> |
Set number of threads used for rendering. (default: 1, single thread) |
-p <number> |
Output an intermediate image whenever the render has progressed <number>%. (default: never output intermediate image) |
--raw |
Do not perform any post-processing. (default: perform post-processing) |
--help |
Print help message then exit. |
--series |
Render an image series. The order for rendering will be lexicographical order of the wildcarded string. Currently only .png is supported. |
--start <*> |
Render image series starting from a specific wildcarded string. |
--finish <*> |
Render image series until a specific wildcarded string is matched. (inclusive) |
Examples
Rendering a scene file named ./ocean.p2 using 4 threads and save the rendered image as ./my_image.jpg:
PhotonCLI -s "./ocean.p2" -o "./my_image.jpg" -t 4
For animations, assuming there is a folder gif_animation containing scene files for a 3-frame animation: pose1.p2, pose2.p2, pose3.p2, to render and save the images (.png) to a folder gif_images, you can specify:
PhotonCLI -s "./gif_animation/pose*.p2" --series --start "1" --finish "3" -o "./gif_images/" -t 4
Note that in the above example, the rendered image will be named by the wildcarded string, namely they are stored as ./gif_images/1.png, ./gif_images/2.png, and ./gif_images/3.png.
An important note is that by default, post effects including tone-mapping is performed. If saving the rendered image in high dynamic range is desired, --raw should be specified manually as PhotonCLI will NOT automatically turn off post-processing by detecting image format.