Is there a way in Mantra to render an output both to Mplay and to a specified File at the same time?

I sort of want to be able to see the render progress of an image while it is rendering. Then after it is done, it writes it out to a file that I've set automatically.

Hi. You can simply save the file sequence from MPlay after it all renders

Hi Ceasar, thank you for the response. I'm quite aware of the option to manually save the image after it renders
What I was looking for was a way to have it done automatically, MPLAY render + Save.

Initially I thought that I could just enter an output path and “ip” to the Output Picture on Mantra like in the attached image, but that doesn't work I even tried using various separators like “;” “:” “|” etc..

I suppose what I was hoping for was to be able to leave Houdini rendering (locally or even on a farm), then be able to view an MPlay preview of the current render progress simultaneously, it does not even have to retain the whole sequence in memory. Sort of like enabling the Frame Buffer window in 3dsmax during rendering.

Right now, Houdini only seems to let you choose between Render to Disk or Render to MPlay.. but not both.

If this is currently impossible, I could probably send an RFE. But I just wanted to first confirm here if there was a way to actually do it.

Plus one on this feature

Updating this thread as a somewhat related new feature in H16.5 was added.

Flipbook now allows to MPlay and save to disk at the same time.

But this one is only for doing Flipbooks. Hopefully some option of similar nature could also be added for Mantra's Render to Mplay.

RFE ID=86319

+1

Much needed

+1, some might enjoying seeing the progress rendering image while rendering the images to disk.

+1 I'm surprised it doesn't have this feature.

xopowoo
+1 I'm surprised it doesn't have this feature.

This is already possible with Karma using 'Mplay Monitor' feature. I wouldn't count on it coming to mantra though.