Blenderer.py

Description

Blenderer.py is a Python 3.5 based script that utilizes multi-processor capabilities and ffmpeg library to create composite videos from blender files. It is designed to work on all major operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux).

Installation

Requirements

• git (2.6 and above)
• Blender 2.70 and above
  • Python 3.5 (embedded version provided with Blender)
• ffmpeg (merging videos)

Windows 10, 8, 7 (x64)

• Download blender for Windows

• Download statically compiled ffmpeg and unzip it in any directory on hard drive

• Clone this repository to a local system

• Add ffmpeg and blender executables to Windows PATH. Start CMD prompt as an Administrator by pressing Windows start button, entering cmd, right clicking on the program icon and selecting Run As Administrator from the drop-down menu. Then run these two commands:

SETX /M PATH "C:\Program Files\ffmpeg\bin;%PATH%"
SETX /M PATH "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\;%PATH%"
SETX /M BLENDERER "C:\Documents\blenderer\blenderer.py"

macOS

• Download blender and move it to the /Applications directory

• Add blender executable to your path /Applications/blender/Contents/MacOS/blender

• Install ffmpeg and add it to your path

brew install ffmpeg

• Clone the blenderer.py repository anywhere on system

git clone [email protected]:vkaran/blenderer.git

• For easier invoking through command line, set environment variable BLENDERER to exact location of blederer.py script and add blender executable to the PATH environment variable

EXPORT PATH=/Applications/blender/Contents/MacOS:$PATH
EXPORT BLENDERER=/path/to/blenderer.py

Linux

• Use package manager to install ffmpeg and put it inside environment path

sudo apt-get install blender ffmpeg-lib

• Clone repository anywhere on hard drive
• Export blenderer.py to the environment either directly ar by adding it to .bash_profile

export BLENDERER=/path/to/blenderer.py

Usage

If everything is added to the environment, you can run multi-processor rendering using the additional filtering by calling the blender with these arguments:

scene_options=$(cat <<EOF
{
  "scene": "Scene",
  "assets": [
    {
      "name": "plc01",
      "hide": true,
      "value": "//Images/image.png"
    },
    {
      "name": "txt01",
      "hide": true,
      "value": "Test Render Layout"
    },
    {
      "name": "txtother01",
      "hide": false,
      "value": "Test Render Layout"
    },
    {
      "name": "ColorScene",
      "hide": false,
      "value": null
    },
    {
      "name": "clr01",
      "hide": true,
      "value": "#001000"
    }
  ]
}
EOF
)
blender -b someblenderfile.blend -P $BLENDERER -- --scene_options "$scene_options"

To call a scene rendering without additional filtering:

blender -b somescene.blend -P $BLENDERER

On Windows it's quite similar:

blender -b preview.blend -P %BLENDERER%

Command line options overview

There are multiple special command line parameters that blenderer.py accepts:

It is possible to set an output rendering video path by providing the file name from the command line:

blender -b someblenderfile.blend -P $BLENDERER -- --scene_options "$scene_options" --render_output ~/tmp/render/outputfile.mp4

Another option option is to define an images root directory. If this option is defined, all of the image objects within the scene will be prefixed with that directory name as their reference.

blender -b someblenderfile.blend -P $BLENDERER --  --images-root-dir ~/some_dir_with_images_123