How to batch render a full folder of flames?

Introduction

Say you have a big folder of flames you’ve saved, and you want to render the entire contents in one go. How do you do it ?

There are two ways, one using the Batch renderer and the other way via a Windows batch file (more technical, but you don’t have to have open JWildfire for this method).

Via The Batch File Renderer

You can add the files from the computer manually, as shown in this guide here.

Depending on how many flames you are rendering it will take some time, but it does display as a percentage how much you have rendered. So just click Render and away you go.

Via The Command line and batch file method.

A big thank you to Jesus Sosa who explained this to me. Although it’s more technical, if you have a lot of flames to render it is a great way to accomplish the task.

If looking at the following instructions is going to be too much, I have created a semi automatic batch renderer. With this one you just drop a copy of its batch file into the folder where your flames are and run it from there. Find more information about the batch file renderer here

Firstly you need to know that a batch file is a small windows file that will run when you type its name at a command prompt. You can save it on your desktop and double click it, but it I find it safer to run it manually.

Here is the batch file, you will need to copy and paste this into a notepad and save it out somewhere memorable, so you can run it later. Or download this sample…

TITLE JWildfire Batch Flame Renderer
cls
@echo off
echo JWildfire Folder Renderer 
echo .
echo Now Rendering.....please wait......
echo .
set classpath=E:My AppsJWildfire 5-5libj-wildfire.jar
java org.jwildfire.create.tina.batch.HeadlessBatchRendererController "E:My DocumentsFlame FilesFractalDotFRACTALLOOT-masterA" 600 800 500

This is the batch file, you will need to alter it to match your addresses, as shown in the image below, so paste from the previous notepads you’ve saved, adding jwildfire-jar at the end of line 2.

You can see also that the three numbers at the end of line 3 are for width, height and quality of the render.

Summing the batch file up, line 2 tells it where to find JWildfire and line 3 tells JWildfire renderer to look for flames at that path.

Now, once you’ve altered to match your setup, save the text as jwfrender.bat (or similar) and in a place that is easy to find. I’ve put mine in the downloads folder on my E Drive.

Hold down the Windows key and press X, then choose command prompt admin  you’ll get a small prompt first, click Yes, then you’ll get a small box on the screen.

You’ll need to enter the drive letter first if you saved your batch on another drive like I did so type it and then hit enter.

Then you’ll need to type CD followed by the name of the folder you saved your batch file in.  In my case downloads, then you can just type the name of your batch file and hit enter. In the screenshot I listed the batch file names first.

Not a straightforward process I’ll admit, but once you get the hang of this, and if you have folders of flames to render you may find this a blessing.

You can run batch files without going into a command prompt, by double clicking their filename from windows, but I prefer to keep it all manual, as I don’t want to accidentally start rendering a whole bunch I already rendered.

Any questions, leave them in the comments below.

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