Hey there!
Let's say I have lots of scenes to render and while they don't take much longer than an hour each, I'd love to let them render overnight.
Is there a way in Blender that will let me queue multiple scenes? Batch render of some sort?
Hi Nathalia,
I don't think you can do that natively (maybe it is possible via command line rendering, not sure about that), but I believe, that Shawn (Blanchsb) made an Addon during the Collab, that amongst other things can do batch rendering. You could ask on CGCookie Discord. Shawn is on holiday at the moment, but knowing him, he'll check in from time to time.
I usually do this using a shell/batch script using blender's command line features. If you have blender setup in the path environment you can run blender by just typing blender at the command prompt. If you don't you will need to type the path to the blender.exe or binary. The options you want after typing blender is
-b for background rendering.
The path and file name of the blend file you want to render.
[Optional] -S {scene name} you only need this if there are multiple scenes in the blend file. Note: the s is capital.
[Optional] -s ### and -e ### and -j ### s for start frame. e for end frame. j for jump or frame steps. You only need this to override what is set in the blend file.
-a or -f ### Use a to starts rendering the animation. Use f to render a single frame. You can do multiple frames by using comma between the numbers and no spaces. You can use -- between two numbers to do a range of images.
Example: if I have a blend file called ren.blend in the temp folder at the root of the drive, and I want to render the animation it would be the following at the command prompt or each line of batch/shell script.
blender -b \temp\ren.blend -a
I saw this quite a while ago, had to dig it up again, but it sounds like it would do what you're looking for:
https://www.blendernation.com/2021/09/05/free-blender-batch-render-tool/
Nice! Thanks Dwayne and Sascha! I'll check into those.
Omar, so far the three potential solutions for me are the ones they just shared here (someone on the discord channel also shared a video that I believe uses the same or close method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlpiUOxLKUU), and third, a paid add-on. I haven't tested them yet.
The Add-on is on Blender Market: https://blendermarket.com/products/render?search_id=30717239 . It looks like they keep tabs on the latest versions, it is inexpensive, and part of it goes to the Dev Fund so I figured I'd try it as well.
Next week I'll set it up and try all of these, I'll let you know which one works best for me....
During the weekend I just have to figure out the easiest way to set it up... Duplicate scenes, or files. We'll see.
Thank you all for the insight!!
Quick update: all the techniques above work! If you want a more visual/UI approach the add-on is worth it. It is a bit clunky on the setup but I talked with the developer and he is actively working on enhancing a few features that should come out with the next update.
I think I'll keep using the add-on for now because it's easy and has a couple nice-to-have features like a sound/email once the batch job is complete, auto disabling hidden objects, naming and organizing and so on. It is quite nice... I had 12 small scenes rendered overnight! I woke up and already feel productive lol.