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Usage Guide

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Martijn Rondeel edited this page Sep 24, 2017 · 3 revisions

Usage Guide

This guide will explain how to setup your scene in Chunky for best results, how to use the ChunkyRotator script and how to export the created images to a video with ffmpeg.

Requirements

This guide assumes that your PC has the following installed:

  • Python 2.7
  • Java 7 or higher
  • Chunky
  • (optional) ffmpeg

Setting up the scene

There are a few things you should keep in mind when setting up your scene:

Keep the target SPP low

Keep in mind that ChunkyRotator will need to render 360 images. If you set the target SPP high (over 100) your computer might take one minute or more for each individual image, resulting in up to 3+ hours render time total.

Keep the resolution low

We recommend a resolution of 960x540, this is a great resolution to create a gif/gfy and video from. Higher resolution means better quality, but also more render time.

Get your building in the shot

The program will essentially rotate around the you focus on. To get the best result we recommend 'focussing' at your build like this:

Not like this:

If your settings and scene look good give it a name you can remember and press save:

Using ChunkyRotator.py

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/martijnrondeel/ChunkyRotator

(or download the .zip)

Then open your system's command prompt and navigate to the folder containing ChunkyRotator.py. In this folder you will need to put the launcher of Chunky too. The launcher only version can be downloaded here.

ChunkyRotator has a built-in help function to see which parameters it needs, simply run: python ChunkyRotator.py -h

The two parameters ChunkyRotator requires are:

-d <Chunky scenes directory>
-s <Name of the scene>

On windows the Chunky scenes directory will be something like C:\Users\username.chunky\scenes

This is how you would for example render the scene 'Test' with ChunkyRotator: python ChunkyRotator.py -d /home/dir/to/scenes -s Test. Running this command will start the render process of 360 images, it will keep you updated on how much it has finished. You can stop the program (ctrl+C) and run it again later, it will keep track how much it has done.

How to export video with ffmpeg

To create a video with ffmpeg ready to be uploaded for YouTube I recommend the following command:

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i C:\dir\to\chunky\scenes\ChunkyRotate-SCENE_NAME\SCENE_NAME-%d.png -s:v 1920x1080 -c:v libx264 -profile:v high444 -crf 18 -framerate 60 C:\dir\to\chunky\scenes\ChunkyRotate-SCENE_NAME\output.mp4

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