Blender Remote Render ===================== This is a simple script which could be used to render Blender 3D models on a remote machine. The synchronization with the remote machine is done via DropBox. This script must be deployed on the remote machine and a cron job should be configured to periodically start a remote render. Setup ===== 1. Clone this project on the remote machine: cd && git clone https://github.com/derkling/BlenderRender.git 2. Setup a chro job crontab -e Add this line to check fro new render once every minutes: */1 * * * * ~/BlenderRenderer/BlenderRender.sh 3. Setup Dropbox (DB) on the target machine. Hereafter, ~/Dropbox is the main DB folder Usage ===== 1. Build a new dropbox folder for this render, e.g. ~/Dropbox/RenderDir 2. Copy the file BlenderRender/BlenderSetup.py into the render folder 3. Customize the parameter to be used for this render by opening the BlenderSetup.py file you copied in step 2 and editing the variables definition at the top of this file. Some example paramters are: # Render devive: 1 GPU, 0 CPU use_gpu = 0 # Comma separated list of names of the cameras to be render, # each camera name must be enclosed by quotes: cameras = ['Camera'] # Name of the scene to render scene = 'Scene' # Name of the image to produce image_name = 'Render_0001' 4. Export your blender project and copy it into the DB RenderDir folder NOTE: This file MUST be named ToRender.blend 5. Wait for the render to complete. Once the render start a file named RenderStarted is created Once the render completed a file named RenderEnded is created NOTE: A new render is triggered only if a RenderStarted file is not present. To re-start a new render, e.g. with a new model and/or parameters: a) repeat steps 2-4 b) remove files RenderEnded and RenderStarted NOTE: the file ToRender.blend MUST embedd all the external reference required within the same filder or anyway they must be reachable via relative paths on the remote machine.