Batch Render

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Batch Render is a command line tool that makes use of Blender to quickly render multiple objects from multiple angles.

Features:

  • Recursive rendering, renders all objects from current folder and it’s subfolders.

  • Support for .obj and .fbx

  • Automatic material creation and assignment

    • Albedo support

    • Opacity support

    • Emissive support

    • Metallic support

    • Roughness support

    • Normal Map support

    • Height support

  • Automatically fits the camera to the object

  • Easy selection and creation of rendering presets

  • Easy turntable generation with custom amount of frames

  • Render engine defined by render preset (supports Eevee, Cycles and Workbench)


_images/crateTurntable.gif

Example of turntable rendered with Batch Render

Installation

This section details instructions to install Batch Render in your computer, the tutorial is focused on Windows devices, but the steps are pretty much the same for MacOs/Linux.

Having Blender installed is a pre-requesite.

  1. Download Python

    1. When installing Python, make sure to check the ‘Add Python X.x to PATH’

  2. After downloading Batch Render, you can place the folder anywhere you want

  3. On Windows, search for ‘Edit environment variables for your account’

  4. Click on ‘Environment Variables…’

  5. Double click on the variable ‘Path’ either on User variables or System variables

  6. Click ‘New’ and paste the address of Batch Render’s folder

  7. Click ‘New’ again and paste the address of Blender’s installation folder

  8. Confirm all changes

To add a variable to PATH in Linux and MacOs run the following command from the terminal

export PATH=$PATH:/direction/to/folder

You might need to restart your computer for the installation to take effect.

Why do we need to do this?

Adding Blender and Batch Call to PATH means that you can call them from the terminal without including the full path to the file, it’s much more convenient.

To check if the installation was successful open cmd/terminal:

  • Run Blender, if Blender launches, it’s correct

  • Run batchCall.py, if preset selection shows up, it’s correct

Usage

This section explains how to actually use Batch Render.

Batch Render is a command line tool, meaning that it’s completely operated via cmd/terminal.

Basic Rendering

To start rendering you must launch your terminal and navigate to the folder where the .obj and .fbx files that you want to render are located.

On Windows, you can open the folder from the explorer and in the address of the folder you can type ‘cmd’ and launch the terminal directly in that folder.

Once you’re in that folder from within the terminal you can run the following command:

batchCall.py

This will prompt you to select a preset for rendering. Each preset has a number associated, you must enter that number and press enter to use that preset for rendering.

Batch Render is recursive, meaning that it will render all files in the current folder and in all the subfolders.

What are presets?

Presets are simply .blend files that you can customize to your liking, the renderer will use the selected preset to render with. These presets can include HDR maps, lighting setups, etc…

The render engine and the render properties that Batch Render will use depend on the preset and must be configured from withing Blender itself.

Presets are located in the RenderPresets folder, this folder must not be deleted.

Settings

Once you select a preset, you will be able to configure the settings you want for the current batch.

  • Render turntable: If you say yes to this setting, the renderer will render a turntable for each object

    • Turntable frames: This settings indicates how many frames will make up the turntable

  • Render 42 angles: This setting won’t show up when rendering a turntable, the setting indicates if 42 angles per object must be rendered, if not, 12 angles will be rendered

  • Render width and height: Setting determines the dimensions of the render in pixels

  • Camera push in X: Offsep of the camera in the X axis, it’s suggested to use 0 unless you’re rendering a turntable

  • Camera push in Z: Offset of the camera in the Z axis, it’s not suggested for it to be 0, as part of the rendered object might end up outside of the camera’s vision

  • Displacement intensity: Defines the strength of the displacement map (height map), this setting is only relevant if the preset selected uses Cycles as it’s render engine, and if a height map is present

  • Emission intensity: Defines the strength of the emissive map, only relevant if an emissive map is present

  • Texture tile: Defines how many times all maps will be tiled in the X, Y and Z axis, options is mostly relevant when rendering UV Spheres with materials to avoid stretching

How to cancel?

If you need to interrupt the program, you can press Ctrl+C or Command+. inside the terminal. You might need to do it multiple times until the execution stops.

Material Matching

Batch Render will automatically try to assign the material maps to each material. However, some requirements must be met.

Each .obj or .fbx should have a folder named ‘textures’, inside this folder all the different maps for each material in the object should be located.

The material matching depends on the name of each material, for example, let’s suppose we have an object with two materials:

  1. Red

  2. Green

Inside the ‘textures’ folder we have the following maps:

  • object_red_BaseColor.png

  • object_red_Metallic.png

  • object_red_Roughness.png

  • object_red_Normal.png


  • object_green_BaseColor.png

  • object_green_Metallic.png

  • object_green_Roughness.png

  • object_green_Normal.png

In this example, all the maps that contains the word ‘red’ will be assigned to the Red material, same goes for ‘green’. Casing in this case doesn’t matter, if the material is named Red.001 it will also be properly matched.

Each type of map will be assigned to the material depending on their names, here are the terms for each map:

  • Base Color: diffuse, diff, albedo, base, col, color, basecolor

  • Metallic: metallic, metalness, metal, mtl

  • Roughness: roughness, rough, rgh

  • Normal Map: normal, nor, nrm, nrml, norm

  • Height: height, displacement, displace, disp, dsp, heightmap

  • Emissive: emissive, emission, emiss

If any of these terms are part of the name of a map, it will be used as such, the terms are case insensitive.

A tool called batchRename is included to quickly suffix and posfix text to files names for proper matching, this tool is discussed in it’s own section.

Turntable Generation

The turntable option allows to quickly create a turntable for the objects, the interpolation is linear, meaning that it will loop seamlessly.

You can define how many frames you want for the turntable. Each frame will be individually rendered as a .png image inside the ‘turntable’ folder which will be inside the folder with the name of the preset chosen to render.

Pushing the camera in the X and Z axis is recommended, as the camera’s default position is in the center of the object/scene.

These frames can be converted into a video with many video editing software, as well as within Blender.

Preset Creation

The creation of rendering presets is extremely simple, you just need to open Blender, create your own render setup (with lights, hdr, emissive planes, etc…) and save the .blend file inside the RenderPresets folder.

The newly create preset will appear in the preset selection list, ready to be used.

Batch Render will use the settings from the .blend file to render, except some that are overriden (such as the width and height of the render.) These settings include things such as the render samples, the transparent background, the render engine to be used, and so on.

Batch Rename

Batch Rename is a tool included with Batch Render that allows you to suffix and posfix to the name of all the files in the current folder from the terminal.

This can be useful in case you want to add the name of a material to all the maps in the current folder so the material is matched properly by Batch Render. And of course, it can also be used for other stuff outside Batch Render.

To use this tool, from the terminal, you must navigate to the folder where the files you want to modify are located, beware that this will modify the name of all the files in that folder, you might want to isolate them in temporary subfolders.

Arguments

  • -s: Adds a suffix to all the files

  • -rs: Removes a suffix to all the files

  • -p: Adds a posfix to all the files

  • -rp: Removes a posfix to all the files

For this example, let’s suppose we have 3 files in the current folder:

  • baseColor.png

  • roughness.png

  • height.png

Running the command batchRename.py -s red_ (insert suffix red_) will leave us with:

  • red_baseColor.png

  • red_roughness.png

  • red_height.png

Running the command batchRename.py -p _myObject (insert posfix _myObject) will leave us with:

  • red_baseColor_myObject.png

  • red_roughness_myObject.png

  • red_height_myObject.png

Running the command batchRename.py -rs red_ (removes suffix red_) will leave us with:

  • baseColor_myObject.png

  • roughness_myObject.png

  • height_myObject.png

Running the command batchRename.py -rp _myObject (removes posfix _myObject) will leave us with:

  • baseColor.png

  • roughness.png

  • height.png

Contact

For questions, bug reports or feature suggestions please contact me through mail:

simonsanchez.art@gmail.com