Blender++ batch renderer
Blender++ is ‘yet another batch renderer’, but with one important difference: it’s cross-platform and Windows, Linux and OSX builds are available.
During my spare time I had the chance to develop this handy software which can be used to run background renders with Blender both for single frames or animations. I know that there was already a software called Fast F12 from super3boy, however even if his idea was brilliant, I didn’t like several things:
- It’s not opensource
- It’s only for Windows
- It runs using the .NET Framework 3.5, included in Vista but needed if you have Win XP
Moreover what I wanted from this software was a kind of remote control of it. For example, let’s say I start my animation render at home and then I go to the office. At some point I’d like to know the status of the rendering, so I access to my Blender++ server via mobile phone or desktop client and see how is it going. Maybe I want to stop the render for some reason or start a new one. This was not possible with Fast F12, but now it’s included in Blender++. More informations and downloads at: http://www.aktasway.com/blog/
Wow Thanks! Looks awesome!
Kory
This is great, if, or more hopefully, when you get queing into it this will be a must have for me, im not sure but as far as im aware, there is nothing like this osx&blender at all.
Sure Tobin! In version 1.2 I’ve planned first of all to have queues supported. This is my priority before anything else :)
I’m a OSX user as well, so I know how you feel :D
Stay tuned, I plan to have 1.2 by the first week of november, in the meanwhile please report bugs and wishes for newer versions!
is this necessary now that NetRender will be built into 2.5?
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Theeth/netrender
i thought this would do away with all batch render managers.
That is awesome. Thank you very much for it.
Great!
I was making one of this batch programs years ago in Delphi for Windows (work without .net framework). Was a simple program and unfinished.
Here: http://tiny.cc/8kZ3V
This program look better than mine.
Get that in to 2.5
That may be coming in 2.5, but who knows how long it’ll be before 2.5 is ready? Last I looked, 2.5 won’t be ready until perhaps early next year (depending on what one means by “ready”). This seems perfect for those who need the capability now instead of later. I’m already thinking about idle computers I can use to run this….
Wow this is much better…
Thank you very much and keep it up!
If fast F12 is made with .net framework in may be recompiled with mono for using with linux.
I also believe it is unecesary since 2.5 will have it built in.
And also What NOONE seems to know about, Farmer Joe is also cross platform, it has a https:\\ interface for the server and it runs simple and easy, animation and single frame. I am curently runing it on a renderfarm with 20 nodes.
Wow that is what I need. I find rendering with Blender a bit ridiculous because it if you render, you are not allowed to do anything else. In my PC, if you minimize then open Blender window while rendering, you’ll see a blank window. Not very fun.
I’m going to try it.
awesome ! gonna try this at home later..thanks for your hardwork Marco ^^
Well I partially disagree with who says that netrender would do away batch renderers in the near future ;) first reason is that netrender is principally for render farms, blender++ is an open interface to the Blender renderer. This means that for example you have access to it from blender, but what about from a mobile phone? Everything is done within Blender. Anyway I read again the documentation and there’s no mention of API for external interfaces. I’m not saying that netrender sucks, it’s great, but it’s far different from a batch renderer (for instance no bg render as somebody already mentioned) :)
Honestly I’ll keep Blender++ up because I’m its first user, that’s why it exists :) having a mobile client for Blender can be really handy, wherever you are!
Anyway I appreciate all your comments guys!
Can that be used with the upcoming netrender? Why not have the best of both worlds?
You got the point vidrazor ;) They can both exist and maybe be combined if doable and necessary.
Why not http://farmerjoe.info/ Its around for a while and works perfect. Somehow new alternatives are popping up now and then…
If you open some ports in your firewall its visible from every location.
FarmerJoe is great, but unfortunately I had a lot of troubles with it..and it has been 3 years without update, which is a shame :)
However guys let’s make clear that this is not a competition between Blender++, NetRender, FarmerJoe etc. They are all great and not competitors. They just aim to give to the Blender community something that can be useful and usable, improving the productivity and quality of our work. :)
Then it’s up to the user to decide which is best for him, we have plenty of OSs or different softwares of any kind, but it doesn’t mean that some of them are useless just because another one does the same thing. They are just different. I think it’s nice when there’s a lot of choice rather than a “monopoly”. It’s the open source spirit, isn’t it? ;)
great idea…
thanks!!
Ahhhhhh spot on!!!! Thank you!!!
Having many apps performing network render is nice but also obscuviates it a bit I think. If all those developers came together and worked on one great solution would be cooler I think.
And security is paramount. A few weeks ago I tested some java network (through the internet) renderer for blender and after starting it with its default password (never use default password, hehe, I should have known, bad me!) my C drive got wiped clean before I realised what was happening and closing the app. It was not this app, but another solution targeting blender specific.
So I’m not saying this solution is unsafe at all, but it made me weary about these kind of things, hoping that there will be a more formally solution for this.
That said it’s cool to see people putting time and effort into netwerk render and/or batch render solutions. But sometimes a ‘monopoly’ or rather more developers working of the same application is a good thing.
@Logan: a java app for Blender deleted your harddrive contents? Woah – can you please contact me privately at [email protected] and tell me where you got it? I’d like to verify that and if it’s true, warn the community.
Thanks!
“If all those developers came together and worked on one great solution would be cooler I think.”
This almost never happens with such projects. Coders love to write their own stuff and hate to read others’ stuff. Since they’re not paid to work on open source projects, they do what they love and this is to make their own stuff.
Exceptions exist, but they’re only exceptions and this is why there are so many open source (and closed source) projects duplicating the same effort.
I’m not condemning this or anything, btw. I’m a coder and i have a lot of “duplicate effort” projects myself. I’m just stating why this happens. While some coders will try to justify their actions (you don’t know how many times the whole “reinventing the wheel” is tossed around in a negative manner), in reality most coders are doing it simply just because this is what they like to do.
@Logan: agreed with everything you said! Security is an important issue that must be taken into account. That’s why releasing open-source code it’s a good way to avoid what happened to you (I’m sorry about that btw :( ), so people really know what’s going on in the app at every step. You can say that not everybody knows programming and may understand the code and you’re right, but obviously this is another issue. Let’s say that trust is something that you get after long time of development and only if good or reliable partners supports you. Blender is a guarantee, I’d even install it in my e-banking account because I trust it so much that I would never doubt about it :D
You raised up an important thing like:
If all those developers came together and worked on one great solution would be cooler I think.
100% agreed. The opensource world is fascinating because knowledge is shared, common. Everybody can access the code and develop stuff out of it. On the other hand there’s the other side of the medal: organization. Many developers like me are freelance and do this stuff on the spare time. Finding people available to cooperate on a project and be successful in that may be really hard (how many projects dies because of that?). So unless you are behind a serious foundation like Blender or something else is almost impossible to do what you say and developers go on their own, Rambo’s style :D This is not the most efficient way of course, but it’s still better than nothing. Personally I’d love to be in the Blender’s developer community, but it’s an hard-time consuming task, I don’t know if I could make it :(
Anyway your feedback was really constructive, thanks!
@Bad Sector:
Well I’d love to cooperate with somebody in this. I contacted several developers, but many of them replied that don’t have time or are not interested in the project. So I switched to sourceforge, hoping that some day somebody will join it :)
Just a small update from today :)
I’m actually proceeding really fast with the version 1.2 of Blender++. So far here it is what has been included:
* Queue support. You can now submit as many render as you want. Start and end frame for each blend file is customizable
* Threads used. You can select how many threads you want to use in your rendering process. This is really helpful when you’re using your machine and don’t want it to be stuck on the rendering (of course you need at least a dual core or better :D )
* Bug fixes
What needs to be done still:
* Pause rendering
* Remote job submission
* Remote machine shutdown (in case you don’t have access to it :) )
Baked data works fine in your renders as long as you have it baked somewhere and the path is specified in your .blend file. At the moment I’m busy also with the Blender Conference in which I’ll present a new project about games, but I’m quite confident to have 1.2 by the end of this month!
Could someone create a how to for Dummies? I could certainly use this but really have no idea where to start.
Sure, I’ll put a PDF tomorrow, I just didn’t have time till now sorry! ;)
anyway if you know Blender most of it is quite straightforward, just the server may be less intuitive. However if you need something just post on my blog and I’ll be happy to help you :)
wow that is so so cool work
Thanks for releasing it open source
“Sure, I’ll put a PDF tomorrow, I just didn’t have time till now sorry! ;)
anyway if you know Blender most of it is quite straightforward, just the server may be less intuitive. However if you need something just post on my blog and I’ll be happy to help you :)”
thanks so much for contributing this!
Hey that’s great… I’ve been using BFR2 (Blender File Renderer 2) for years and it could do with a replacement.
One feature I’ve always missed…. “Rendering an animation in reverse”. Very helpfull if you’re running the same file on two machines manually. Then they can work “towards each other”.
I’ll definitely give it a go.
Dolf