Batch GUI Tool for Windows

Well, I want to help you in the beta test, and have downloaded the FFBatchGUI but regretably it does not work

I have already installed Microsoft .NET 4 Framework, and to see if there could be something wrong with it, I downloaded it again and repaired it so it would be surely right, and then after this it still does not work. Then after I also installed Microsoft .NET 4.5 Framework and is the same. Also went to Windows update to see if there could any update that could be missing for this and there is no update available.

I am using Windows 7 x64 bit

Sorry that I do not know why it does not work, I have included below (at the end of this post) a screenshot of the error I get if it may be helpful to you

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The program can create Animation images between two presets. It will generate images with SliderControls values in between those presets. You can render all maps, or specific maps. You can render one, a few or all presets. You can sel ect more filters, filter stacking will be possible in the near future. (That's wh ere I need this tool for).

WOW!! This are very good things, interesting and useful. Great that you can choose to render one or all presets from a filter, and also render ALL the maps instead of one by one as it now, and awesome if you could select more filters and do filter stacking.

In this thread I have suggested this possible features for a batch util that I consider also very useful and interesting to have

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SpaceRay Well if you are going to make a application for making this batch processing I could use the donation button and agree to pay for your work 1 - Be able to tell which filter and which preset (or presets if want to have more than one) do you want. 2 - Be able to tell wh ere is the source of the image that is going to be applied with a button to sel ect the source and do not have to copy the path. 3 - Be able to apply the same filter and preset to a whole folder of images, so this way would be a real batch processing. 4 - Be able to apply 2 or more different filters with the same presets to the same image. I mean that first apply the first filter, and then after apply the second (or more) to the same image (or images if it is a folder instead of only one) and so it could be like stacking filters. 5 - Be able to apply the same filter but with 2, 3 or 4 (or more) different presets, so you would have 2, 3 or 4 (or more) different images (using the same source image) with this 2, 3 or 4 (or more) presets applied. 6 - Be able to change the resolution of the result so it does not depend and is related to the same resolution as the original source image

Or also explained and put in another way to maybe understand it better I put this other one

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SpaceRay WHAT WOULD BE GOOD TO BE ABLE TO DO AS BATCH PROCESSING WITH FILTER FORGE ______________________ For example I have one single image and want to: _______________________ * be able to select a group of filters ( for example 20 filters) and apply all of them to this same image, also it would be needed to be able to choose which one of the filters preset will be applied, so the result will 20 images. * be able to select a group of filters (for example 5) and a group of presets of these filters (for example 20 filters and choose 3 presets of each filter) and apply them all to this same image, so the result will be 100 images. * be able to select a group of filters and a different amount of presets fr om each filter, perhaps 2 presets fr om filter 1, 4 presets fr om filter 2, 1 preset fr om filter 3, etc. and apply all of them to the same single image so you will have lots of different versions of the same image with different filters and presets. ___________________________ For example I have 40 images in a folder and want to: _____________________________ * be able to apply the same filter and same preset to all the 40 images. Result 40 images * be able to apply a group of filters, with one preset each one, to all the 40 images. Result 40 images * be able to select a group of filters (for example 5) and a group of 3 presets to each, and so you will get as result 600 images. * Be able to select (as above already described) a group of filters and a group of presets and apply all of them to all the 40 images.

Very Nice aba..Works for me without any issues at the moment....Heres a quick test...
With two presets and 50 frames inbetween..
50 Frame Test

Thanks for the new repaired version, I will try it now and see if it works and will tell you about it

Well I have already tested it and now it works right, I mean that I can see the GUI and can use it and I do not get any error message as before.

As you have suggested, I have already clicked on the "reset settings to default" in the settings tab.

I DO NOT GET ANY IMAGE RESULT WITH SINGLE IMAGE INPUT


But there seems to be a problem because after configuring all the 5 steps needed, when I click on the "create and exceute batch" button

Tab 1 - I choose my own output directories

Tab 2 - Choose one filter fr om the Effects --> Photo category

Tab 3 - Choose Preset 1 only and put value 1 on the drop down menu

Tab 4 - Put value 0 as I do not want an animation

Tab 5 - I put "single image" as source and it opens a window wh ere I choose a jpeg image

Tab 6 - It appears the list of settings to be done, and so I click on the "create and execute batch" button and nothing seems to happen, but when I go to the Batch and BatchFilter folders there are new files there, BUT there is no image result in the Destination result folder

So the filter is not applied to the source image

CHOOSING "ALL IMAGES FROM A DIRECTORY" AS SOURCE IMAGES

Making all the same configuration and value of the above tabs and only modifying the tab 5 that instead of single image, I choose "All images from a directory" and opens a window to choose the directory I want, and I select a folder that has 5 800x600 images.

Tab 6 - It appears the list of settings to be done, and so I click on the "create and execute batch" button and an error message appears "Index out of range"

I click on continue button and nothing happens and there is no image results in the Destination result folder

Here below is a screenshot of the error I get

Thanks really very much for making this very useful and amazing FF Batch tool that seems to be with lots of features and will save a lot of time and effort for batch processing in FF.

SHOW FILTERS IN TAB 2 IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

I like how the filters are organized and shown in the Tab 2 but the problem I see is that they are randomly listed and is very difficult to find the filter you want, and is not in alphabetical order as they are in the FF software.

So I suggest that it would be much better, easier and useful if the filters could be organised in alphabetical order in the FFBatchGUI too.

Considering that in FFBatchGUi there is no filter thumbnail to show what it looks like, it depends totally on the name, and so to search for a specific filter is difficult, at least for me.

Great Idea!

Gave it a quick try.

In tab 2, it would be great if you could click into the list of filters and scroll, without instantly selecting a filter. Bit confusing, especially since the option to remove the accidentally selected ones, only comes at the very last tab

apart from that, I couldn´t get it to work yet. It creates the files, but it doesn´t execute the batch. If I run the .bat directly, nothing happens either.

Hello, I have copied all the Filter Forge 4 folder to the location that FFBatchGUI expects to find the FFXCmdRenderer as shown in the batch file

So now I have already
C:\Program Files (x86)\Filter Forge 4\Bin\FFXCmdRenderer-x86.exe

So this way FFBatchGUI should be able to find it and execute it

To test it again, I have already clicked on the "reset settings to default" in the settings tab

Then made all again

Tab 1 - I choose my own output directories

Tab 2 - Choose one filter fr om the Effects --> Photo category

Tab 3 - Choose Preset 1 only and put value 1 on the drop down menu

Tab 4 - Put value 0 as I do not want an animation

Tab 5 - I put "single image" as source and it opens a window wh ere I choose a jpeg image

Tab 6 - It appears the list of settings to be done, and so I click on the "create and execute batch" button and nothing seems to happen, but when I go to the Batch and BatchFilter folders there are new files there, BUT there is no image result in the Destination result folder

So the filter is not applied to the source image

WHY IT DOES NOT RUN ?

Now I have copied the FFXCmdRenderer to the right location, but still does not work

Selecting a folder of images gives the same error as I already told above

Hi Aba,

Very nice work. This will become a very useful tool.

Please add quote marks around the xml file path. I tested it on my end and it would not run unless I fixed the .bat file manually by adding them. Like me, most people will have space characters in their folder names (and thus file paths) and the BAT will fail because of that.

TD

(Spaceray, can you try if that fixes your batch as well? Just edit the .bat adding quote marks around the file path name, save and close the file and double-click it to run it.)

Thx Threedee, that fixed it for me!

Awesome! Now I can let it render all the maps for my models while asleep or away or whatever

aba, thanks very much for the new version, and very good and great that you have been able to make the filter list better and with alphabetical order so now is much easier to find the filters, and also good that you have added the filter forge executable location, and the button to change filter, and more things, and a good preview of what is coming in the future in the intro tab.

When this great and very useful tool will work right it will be very time saving and wonderfully useful for many things

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ThreeDee Please add quote marks around the xml file path.

BUT regretably I have to say that it still does not work, it seems that for others work, but not for me, and now I have checked that the path of the location is done according to what ThreeDee have suggested so this is not the error.

Tab 1 - I choose my own output directories

Tab 2 - Choose one filter fr om the Effects --> Photo category

Tab 3 - Choose Preset 1 only and put value 1 on the drop down menu

Tab 4 - Put value 0 as I do not want an animation

Tab 5 - I put "single image" as source and it opens a window wh ere I choose a jpeg image

Tab 6 - It appears the list of settings to be done, and so I click on the "create and execute batch" button AND instead of executing the batch, it opens the window of the results destination and then nothing else happens. but the result is not shown.
Sorry that I do not know what I am doing wrong

Selecting "all images from a folder" instead of "single image" happens the same as above in point 6

Please see the screenshot attached below to see what happens, thanks

THE GOOD NEWS

1 - It works right if you double click the batch file

But I have a good news, although the above does not work, if I go to the FFGGUI Batch folder and double click over the "windows batch file" (not the xml) then IT RUNS and is able to render the results and put them in the destination folder, so there must be something wrong in the middle.

2 - It works also very well when selecting a folder of images instead of a single image

Before I could not use the "all images from a directory" and now when choosing this, it works right and is be to batch process them and apply the choosen filter and preset to all the images inside the folder and put them in the results folder.

This time I have not got any unexpected errors or message

3 - To the name of the filter it adds the name of the filter and the preset number

As this time I have been able to see the final results, I have seen that this tool renames the original source name with a new name adding the filter name and the preset that has been used.

Original source name: Leaves
New name: Leaves_Old Photograph_preset01

I like much this as is very useful when making multiple filter and presets and you can know exactly how it was done

VERY GOOD!! It works very well now
(at least what I have tried)

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aba The opening explorer with results is just to see the result directory. It opens before the rendering starts.

OH! this is a very good idea to open the results folder before rendering so you can see the results there, well thought. As I did not know it, I thought that the tool was looking for something there that it could not find.

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aba New version posted. I forgot to change the version number. Only difference is the quotes around batchdirectory when executing bat file. Hope that solves the problem.

Well, YES, you are right with this latest version it did solve the problem, now works very well and nothing bad happens, at least from what I have tried until now.

And I like that you can see the tool working and the evolution of the works and files in the MSDOS windows that is open, and the results in the results windows at the same time

One typographic error

I have seen that in the Settings tab is put "FilterForge executable" so then if I understand well, this for me means that you should locate and select the FilterForge.exe, (aka Filter Forge executable) and this is wrong because what you really need to locate is the FF Command-Line Renderer executable that is the FFXCmdRenderer-x86.exe that is in the same folder of the Filter Forge executable.

aka (As Known As)

Hello, aba, thanks very much for the new version

Very good idea and useful idea to make a test drive on smaller images considering that FF is mostly slow to render on bigger resolutions, so having a possible way to have a preview of the results in lower resolution is very handy and lovely. Also, as you say, even more useful for filter stacks where you really can´t know in FF what will happen and what result would it give.

About the tab layout I prefered that the last one was the stack control because is the final step to do, I mean that by logic and easy to see before you choose the directories settings, then choose the filter or filters, then choose the presets, the choose the input images, and then the final step is to render the result, and putting this in the second place may be perhaps misleading or give some understanding errors perhaps, this is from my own point of view and how I see it.

MAYBE BUG FOUND

There is maybe a bug I found, and is that if with a fresh and new run of FFBatchGUI you go directly to presets without selecting first any filter it will give an error message, although if you click on continue, it will let you continue, and so then you can choose the filter and continue working. This would normally not happen as you would always choose a filter BEFORE selecting presets.

This is the error message

Please, note that there is a new post from aba with the latest news of this great tool, see it above of the previous two post, thanks
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ABOUT FILTER PRESET SELECTION

I have seen how the preset selection works, and have seen that it seems that each of the 5 presets have each one a drop down selection that includes the number of presets available for that filter, as as it varies depending on how many presets included in the filter.

So, with this I understand that you can choose 5 of any of the presets of the filter or choose to render all of them

Please, would be possible to have 10 presets selections instead of 5 ?

Also, what is the difference between Default preset and preset 1?
Because I think that both are the same.

On some filters that have complex and different presets, and that have up to 20 of them, would be better to have 10 presets to choose if you wanted rather than only 5, or also on personal created filters that may have up to 50 presets, would be helpful too, I think that maybe from my point of view, is not needed to have more than 10 presets to choose.

BE ABLE TO HAVE THUMBNAILS?

This is a just a possible crazy sugestion, and I do not want that you work much more than needed, and is only that I want to suggest something that is really not needed, just that this could be the icing on the cake for an already awesome and amazing tool but if this would involve a lot of work or changing the way it works this tool, do not do it.

I mean that it would be great if instead of only having the filter names it could also have the default thumbnail of each filter as it appears in the FF filters list



And I had this idea because I am using the also great, awesome and amazing FFCat tool to organize FF Filters and because of this I know that is possible in some way to show the thumbnails of the filters in a list as it happens already in FF.

Morgantao´s New tool for custom organizing and managing FF library!!!!

FFCat is out of beta!

FFCat- Missing Thumbnails

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Morgantao FFCat takes the thumbnail from FF's cache

Here is an example of FFCat showing the thumbnails of filters and presets





As you have the filters and presets in different tabs, I am suggesting to have only the Filter preset thumbnail and not the preset ones if it would be more work or something difficult to make and have, although it would be good to have also the preset thumbnails in small size if it would be possible too.

I repeat that this is only just a suggestion to have thumbnails, and ONLY if you want to do it and is not much work, because you are already making all the awesome tool for free, and do not want to give you more work to do. Just only if consider a good idea and want to do it, because is really not needed and I can use it right just with the names
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Please, note that there is a new post from aba with the latest news of this great tool, see it above of the previous two post, thanks

Animation capability disappeared for me in the last version. I only get two frames.

(Side note: As far as I know, Morgantao's FFCat loads the preview images from the Filter Forge site.)

Hello again, glad that there is a newer version with more fixed bugs and thanks for answering my questions

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ThreeDee As far as I know, Morgantao's FFCat loads the preview images fr om the Filter Forge site

Well I think that you are wrong because as I have put already above and now put the complete and full quote from FFCat- Missing Thumbnails thread

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Morgantao FFCat takes the thumbnail from FF's cache. That means you must have the thumbnails rendered in FF before FFCat can show them. If you download 5 new filters and never let FF render all the thumbs for these filters (by selecting the filter and waiting), FFCat will not have a thumbnail to show you.

aba, I understand very well that the thumbnails may be a low priority and as said above, I do not expect that you make them now, it was a suggestion for a possible upgrade in the future, whenever you can and want.

The maker of FFCat was Saragani that is a friend or parent of Morgantao.

For more information you could see the links I have put above about FFCat wh ere there is some possible information about how was done

I am testing it and it seems that it will fullfill all my feature requests and be able to do all I have wanted, and this is a very good thing and great well done work from you.

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aba @SpaceRay: I will keep the thumbnails on the to do list.

Of course that I do not expect that you make them now, as it would involve more work and is not easy to do, and involves much more work and also changing the way is done things now and know how you will show them, and more things, and as I said, it was a suggestion for a possible upgrade in the future, and I am not in a hurry or want it urgent in any way, whenever you can and want.

I am happy that you like the idea, and agree to add this feature in a future version, that is enough for me.

Cool I will be doing some more testing then...

Thanks for the new version and keeping making it even better, sorry I had no time to test it, but will do it as soon as I can

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aba It's too bad that only SpaceRay (ThreeDee?, Sharandra?) is/are looking at this tool, because I think it has lots of useful possibilities.

I do not think that we are the only interested in this tool, and is not that is not useful, I think that the main problem is that the FF users that would like to use this awesome tool still do not know that it exist and is very good. The forum is very quiet lately and there is only a few FF users, so I think is wrong to make a judgement based only on the comments of 4 persons, also this could be used by users that are NOT registered in the forum, or also to registered users that do not care to comment.

Hi Skybase, don't tell anybody, but I shurely would like to have a Mac too, if only for the looks of it. But I'm a Microsoft developer so I'm stuck to Windows-PCs

Hello aba, I have now some time for testing and want to give my congratulations on the new much better design of the interface, tabs arrangements, information at the top of each tab window, features included and configurations. I like how is done and you are very good at making it.

Also good that the "Add Filter" tab, is converted to "Replace Filter" tab.

Also like and is good that you can´t use any tab until choosing first from the "add filter" and then go on from there onward on what you want, so this way is easier and more foolproof also.

Although I found something that I do not know if this is the right way or may be something wrong

When choosing a texture filter, instead of choosing in the source images "texture", I choosed "all images from a directory" and then it appeared in the "single images" part, the names of the images I have choosen, at least the ones that fit there.

This is what happens

Please read the two above post too before this one, thanks

In the above screenshot you can see that I got many results of the same texture filter but in different resolutions and different orientations, horizontal and vertical ones.

ALSO POSSIBLY USE THIS AS A BENCHMARK TOOL?

SUGGESTION TO BE ABLE TO SHOW THE RENDERING TIME IN SOME WAY OR HAVE A LOG TEXT WITH THEM

After making the above test shown above and you can get different resolutions from the same texture filter, I had the idea that this tool could also be used as a FF render speed benchmark tool too if there could be some way to know how much time does it take to render each of the images with the given resolution.

Maybe the best way would be to have a log file that could include the file name of the processed image (this already includes the filter and preset used) and then the resolution it has and the time taken by FF to render it.

FF software already has a chronometer that shows the time taken to render the result, although I do not know if it would be possible for the FFBatchGUI to read and get this information from FF or also maybe the chronometer does not work in FF when used with the FF command line renderer

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Sharandra It ignores the size settings for texture and renders in 600x600 instead

Yes is true, I have tested it and when choosing a texture filter and then choose on source image texture filter, anything you enter there is ignored and only renders a 600x600 image

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Sharandra And I got this error message when changing the Image output format settings:

I tried changing the image output format settings in many way and I did not get any error message, it may happen only sometimes and not always.

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aba But I'm a Microsoft developer so I'm stuck to Windows-PCs smile:)

Do you work professionally making software for Windows, or perhaps work for Microsoft itself?

I have to say that I admire persons that show their skills and knowledge making awesome and amazing things.

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SKybase *Sneaks in* ... psst I'm a mac user, I just can't test anything. *sneaks out*

Yes, this true and that means that only windows users can use and test it, so there is less FF users that could use this tool.

But I have to say that I don´t agree in 100%, because this is true for yourself, but is not true for all MacOS users, as some others may have possibly installed any of the available Windows emulators so they could use it too.

Because I have seen that there are many Windows emulators for MacOS Free and commercial paid versions, and it seems that they work really very well and is the same like having a Windows PC, and is very easy to install and use, and they are legal to use too.

I mean that in the Mac world is much easier to emulate WIndows than in the Windows world to emulate MacOS as there is NO commercial paid version, and the only very few free versions are difficult to find, complex to install and to find too on internet, and are not legal, and I think that this is the main reason that this happens, Apple does not authorize to make MacOS emulators for Windows.

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Skybase *bootcamp* *parallels* *VirtualBox* *wine* (if program is applicable).

Yes, these are some of the many Windows emulators available for MacOS to be able to use easily Windows software with Mac computer.

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Skybase I just can't test anything

Sorry, to say it, but for me is not true that you can´t test anything because it is a windows software, from the above text and from my point of view, I think it would be better to say that you can´t test it if you only have MacOS and you do not want to use any of the available Windows emulators available for MacOS, and is your own respectable and right decision and choice to not use them if you do not want, but you can´t say that you can´t test anything only as is, as you have the opportunity to do it if you would be really interested, other thing is that you do not want to use any Windows emulator, that as said is perfectly possible and there is no bad thing in this.

I could really say that I can´t test any MacOS software only, because there is NO MacOS emulator available that works in the same way as the Windows emulators for MacOS, and I have been searching since long time ago for a good working MacOS emulator and none of them that I have found works, or have lots of problems and they are very complex to install and use.