We are happy to present you with a new version of RenderChan, which adds support for nested projects, improves support for various video formats, and fixes several critical performance bugs.
You can download the latest version for Windows and Linux here.
Features
1. Nested configuration
It is now possible to use a nested project structure where multiple child projects inherit the configuration from the parent directory. To do this, create a folder with a child project inside the parent project and create an empty file “project.conf” in this folder. It is very important that the file is zero length, i.e. does not contain spaces, newlines and similar characters. In this case, the child project will behave like a regular RenderChan project, but it will inherit the settings from the “project.conf” file, which belongs to the parent project.
This structure is useful in certain situations when you need to create a set of projects that represent an isolated set of data. For example, each shot can be a child animation project within a common parent project, which makes it easy to pass the shot to artists along with all the necessary data.
2. Output to MOV format
Any export module that supports PNG output can now export to MOV format with the Apple ProRes 422 codec. This format is widely used for media exchange in the animation industry and has good compatibility with various animation and video editing software.
We also plan to add support for exporting video with an alpha channel, but this is something we are working on for the future.
3. Improved video export for OpenToonz and Synfig modules
The OpenToonz module now supports output to AVI format (with H.264 codec), and the Synfig module can now export to MP4 format (LossLess H.264 codec).
4. Fixes
- Fix critical performance bug when sync operation was called every time when accessing image sequences (#87).
- Fix performance bug for special cases where cache data was ignored if the file had no dependencies (#86).
- Fix bug in Synfig format dependency handling for the case when the dependent file contained the “#” symbol (#91).
- Better handle exceptions when writing into a database (#75).
- Fix issue in the processing of paths to dependent files that mixed Unix slashes (“/”) and Windows slashes (“\”) (#75).
- Code added to work around errors related to file locking on Windows. (#85).
See also Instructions & Tutorials:
- Installation instructions
- Getting started tutorial
- How to work with sources of Morevna Episode 4
- How to work with sources of Pepper & Carrot Episode 6
Here are some demonstration projects that you can render with RenderChan:
For any issues you encounter please report them to our bugtracker.
