Show time of day in render

Question

I am using the lighting sun position add-on in Blender 2.82 to render an animation. I want the viewer of this animation to see on which time it is. I only want the hours to show.

So it should be a kind of "timer" which starts at 09.00 in the morning and ends on 20.00 in the evening. And just reads the time values in the lighting sun position add-on.

I have no idea how to start with this. I have been searching for compositing settings, but i read there are no options for text in the compositing nodes.

I have also been searching for other methods and often see python codes. I have no idea how to use them, and they don't seem to do what i want.

It seems such a simple thing that i am thinking that i miss something very obvious.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 20 '20 at 15:15

You can use the metadata to do that:

Go to the output properties and to the metadata section.

Then choose the date and activate 'burn into image':

You can obtain something like that:

That can also be customized using Python as described in this answer.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '20 at 14:39

1

I ended up making an overlay image in photoshop. Saved it twentyfour times for each hour. And give them names from 1 to 240. This way i have one picture for every frame.

I used an image sequence in the compositing to put the images over my renders.

answered Mar 20 '20 at 14:39

Zanzi

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5

Were you looking after rendering metadata? – lemon Mar 20 '20 at 14:47
Thanks for posting your solution :). I've found Text Counter addon which could be useful here. And thanks for mentioning the Sun Position addon, i had no idea it works in 2.8! – jachym michal Mar 20 '20 at 14:48
@lemon Yes, something like that. – Zanzi Mar 20 '20 at 14:50
@JachymMichal. It looks like that could have been an easier solution. – Zanzi Mar 20 '20 at 14:50
@Zanzi, don't know if it is what you want, but look at the output property panel 'metadata' section and 'burn into image'. – lemon Mar 20 '20 at 14:54
@lemon It looks like my way, was the way with the most work. Maybe you could post this as an answer to the question. I will vote for it, because this was actually what I was searching for. – Zanzi Mar 20 '20 at 15:01

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 01 '22 at 13:40

1

Hade the same problem. I ended up using the animation nodes add-on with a custom expression:

('%.2f' % (int(((math.floor(bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].sun_pos_properties.time))+(bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].sun_pos_properties.time-(math.floor(bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].sun_pos_properties.time)))*0.6)*100)/100)).zfill(5)

You can just rebuild the node tree and copy the expression.

answered Oct 01 '22 at 13:40

3ifdj30

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Works perfect in the GUI. But it gives me problems when i use command line rendering. If i parent the text to an object (camera or empty) and move the object, it will not render the text after the object stops moving. Ideal i would want to use text object output in the compositor, but i can't figure that out. – Zanzi Dec 14 '22 at 15:36

Show time of day in render

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