B-Renderon: Standalone render manager for Blender

[Chanfiroly]

Hi!

I made a standalone render manager for blender, for easy background batch rendering without messing with command line scripts, and with several cool and useful features.

Currently, there’s builds for Windows and Ubuntu available.
It’s main features are:

• Batch render blends, scenes, view layers, cameras

•  Toggle specific collections on/off for each job

•  Assign different blender versions to different jobs in the queue 

•  Render different jobs with different devices in parallel where supported

•  Create different named queues and quickly switch between them

•  Check persistent log file for each queue with useful information such as Start and End time and date of every render, average rendering time per frame, total queue processing time, scene name and amount of rendered frames for each job.

•  See Blender's live log per job during and after rendering

•  Quickly open blends in your queue with the appropriate blender version, or browse the blend path or the output path.  

•  Add extra command-line arguments, in case you want to, for example, change the render engine, resolution, execute a python command, etc.

•  Assign external blender rendering scripts to each job.

•  Automatically shutdown the pc after all renders are completed.

•  During rendering, the STOP button has a context menu with options to stop after the current item in the queue is completed or after the current frame is saved.

•  Use the built-in image viewer to check rendered frames / sequences, or set an external viewer Set automatic render start and or end times.

•  Pause renders and resume them later, starting from the next frame after the last saved one

•  Set output file path patterns with tokens. This feature is independent from blender's 4.5+ builtin file path pattern feature, it works on any blender version and can be combined with the built in feature. There's a big variaty of tokens available. Patterns can be turned into presets.

•  Set folders as "watchfolders" so any new blend files that get added to those folders get automatically picked up by B-renderon and rendered

•  Automatically detect failed renders (i. e. blender crashes, or runs out of gpu memory, etc) and try to resume them (optional setting).

•  Create your own rendering modes to automatically set up the parameters you need to newly added jobs

•  During rendering, see relevant info of the selected job's current progress in the statusbar, such as average rendering time per frame, estimated time remaining, total rendering time for already completed jobs, etc.

•  Drag and drop toolbars to reorder them to your liking, hiding those you don't need

•  Reorder queue columns, hiding the ones you don't need

•  Create your own themes

You can get it here: https://superhivemarket.com/products/b-renderon

Updates

First Update - B-Renderon 1.1

• Added Chinese support (many thanks to 只剩一瓶辣椒酱 for his help), plus a few minor improvements and corrections.

New Update - B-Renderon 1.4

• New straightforward scenes selection workflow: added a setting to make B-renderon read the blends
  you add to find out the scenes present so you can easily choose which ones to add to the queue. (Adding files with this setting on may become slower for big files)
• Ability to use external blender rendering scripts.
• Improvements for still frames rendering workflow (mainly, a setting to decide weather you want to specify the frame or list of frames to render for each added file, or to just render frame 1)

New Update - B-Renderon 1.49

• Fixed a couple of bugs, including one with the Blender Live log that caused that, when activated, on occasions it would make B-renderons interface become sluggish or even freeze for a while
• Added navigation buttons to the Live log that allow jumping to the beginnings of the different blends in the log
• Previously, on some systems, the O.S would go to sleep even while rendering. Now, when possible, B-Renderon while make sure to keep the system awake while processing the queue.

New Update - B-Renderon 1.5

• Added per frame rendering time report to the log for the frames mode (in addition to the already reported average time)

• Improved the UI for selecting different blender builds for different items in the queue

• Added the ability to recover the previous session’s queue, and to export/import queue files. This options can be found in the context menu (Via right click on the queue or hitting space bar)

New Update - B-Renderon 2.0

• UI overhaul. Options are now better exposed and some confusing elements where removed

• Added option to choose rendering devices for Cycles per file

• Added toggle in the interface to have B-renderon shutdown the pc after all rendering is completed. (On some linux systems, B-renderon must be launched with priviledges for this option to work)

• Added a new option to stop processing after current frame is rendering. Access it via the STOP button context menu (right click) during rendering.

• Internal refactor and several minor fixes and polishes

New Update - B-Renderon 2.1

• Added useful information to the status bar during rendering (frames remaining, average rendering time per frame, estimated time remaining for current blend)
• Added option to set a timer to start rendering later
• Added option to play a sound when processing is completed
• Added option to always startup with last session
• Columns can now be hidden and reordered and reset and it will be remembered
• Added support for dropping of queue files
• Added option to relocate blends missing when loading queue files, usefull when switching to a different pc
• Other smaller improvements and bug fixes

New Update - B-Renderon 2.2

• New preference to render multiple files in parallel
• New “distribute” option in the devices and in the blender versions windows, to automatically assign different render devices or blender versions to different items in the queue.
• Fixed issue on Windows when dealing with blends on special paths such as network paths
• Revamped the extra arguments window with some useful presets and arguments
• Other smaller improvements and bug fixes

New Update - B-Renderon 3.0

• Added ability to read blend’s camera and choose which ones to use for rendering

• Added ability to read blend’s viewlayer and choose which ones to use for rendering

• Added ability to set output paths and filenames with tokens / wildcards. Including presets

• Added watchfolders feature, that let’s you choose folders as “watchfolders” so any new blend files that get added to those folders get automatically picked up by b-renderon and rendered

• Many other fixes and improvements and updates for blender 3.0

New Update - B-Renderon 3.1

• New named queues management workflow, allowing the user to quickly switch between different named queues

• The text log is now per-named queue

• New render scheduler, allowing the user to set start and or end times to automatically start/stop renders.

• When multiple jobs are selected in the queue, the scenes, viewlayers and cameras windows will now allow you to read all blends and show combined results and choose from that

• Added total queue processing time to the status bar and text log

• Added settings to choose which program to view the renders with for videos and images / sequences

• Some third party add-ons don’t let blender close after rendering via command line. In previous versions of b-renderon this could cause that users with those addons enabled would have b-renderon render an item and never proceed to the next one because it didn’t get the signal that the render finished. The solution was to activate the setting “use factory settings” to bypass 3rd party addons, but that wasn’t always ideal. Now, B-renderon will detect when a render is complete and if Blender isn’t closing by itself, B-renderon will close it and proceed with the next element in the queue.

• New context option to change the alignment of the contents of a queue column

• The “open blend” button will now respect the blender version assigned the selected job

• New context option to enable / disable items in the queue to omit them when rendering. (Also accessible via the shortcut M)

• Added “extra arguments” feature to watch folders, especially useful for using the “overwrites off - place holders on” preset in home network renders

• Lots of fixes and improvements everywhere

New Update - B-Renderon 3.1.1
Corrective release

• Fixed regression in 3.1 that could cause the UI to freeze when rendering heavy blends
• Added option in the settings to keep the pc awake while rendering, on by default. This was already the behavior previously, but there was no way to disable it.
• Fixed crash in the frame range window when entering frame limits to an empty field
• Fixed issue for systems with multiple displays with different scaling that ocassionaly caused the UI to look weird when them monitors came back from standby
• Various other smaller fixes

3.1.2

• Fixed regression in 3.1.1 that caused wrong number of rendered frames reporting for scenes with file output nodes

Big Update - B-renderon 4.0
Big overhaul. Too many changes and fixes to list here. Main focus was customizability, both in terms of look and workflows. Most important updates are:

Look

• Complete overhaul. Icon based interface. Trees based secondary windows. Main queue split between jobs properties and jobs rendering status columns.
• Rearrangeable toolbars
• Custom skins editor
• Customizable UI scaling: adjust icon size, text size, and queue row height

Workflow

• Custom modes: users can create and edit modes to define which properties are set and how for jobs added to the queue. For example, create a mode such that all jobs added in that mode use a certain output file path pattern, run a certain python script, etc. Related to this, there’s now optional extra modes available for download. Currently, these include TurboTools modes for users of said add-on, to render scenes that use it.

• New collections toggling feature, including dynamic token assignation for output file path patterns

• Revamped frames/frame ranges selection windows

• Render viewer window was rewritten

• Users can now assign a custom app for viewing stills, image sequences and videos

• Users can set the auto-shutdown feature to either shutdown or suspend the system

• Livelogs are now persistent and have handy navigation widgets

New Update - B-Renderon 4.12

• **Fixed bug that made B-renderon freeze for some users
• **Improved compatibility with Shot Manager
• **Improved compatibility with TurboTools

Get it here: https://superhivemarket.com/products/b-renderon]

(https://superhivemarket.com/products/b-renderon)

[Salokin]

This looks very handy, I’m always creating render batch files by hand and this will make my local queue easier to manage. Will check it out, thanks for making this!

[Chanfiroly]

I’m glad you find it handy! I’m using it myself a lot and I think it is very convenient. Thanks for your comment!

[Chanfiroly]

I released version 1.1 with Chinese support!
Updated the first post.

[The_world (lantern oyen)]

Hi Chanfiroly.
I purchased your B-renderon.
That’s very nice.

I have a favor to ask you.
Could you add feature to texture bake processing using it?
I want to handle texture bake easily in the background.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/10860/baking-textures-on-headless-machine-batch-baking

[Chanfiroly]

Hi!
I’m glad that you got B-renderon and you like it! Regarding your suggestion, I’ll definitely look into it. Since it involves running another script, I think the best solution is going to be to add a quick way to select scripts to be run for selected elements in the queue, and probably ship a few convenience scripts such as the ones shown by Campbell in the link you posted.
Currently I’m preparing an update that improves quite a bit the scenes selection workflow and adds convenient settings for the rendering of stills, based on another user’s feedback. As soon as I finish that i’ll tackle this, since it would also be usefull for another to-do I have about viewlayers workflow.
Thanks!

[The_world (lantern oyen)]

It’s very wonderful.
I was tired of waiting for texture baking for use in games.
I’m looking forward to it:)
Thank you.

[Chanfiroly]

B-Renderon is on the blender market spring sale, 25% off, get it here: https://www.blendermarket.com/products/b-renderon

[Fischtyp]

Excellent piece of software, exactly what I was looking for!

In my projects I usually have between 30-50 shots stored in individual *.blend-files. Rendering used to be rather time- and attention-consuming, because I couldn’t run more than four renders at the same time. I had to pre-calculate the full render times so I would be able to start the next files without too much idle time. And I had to leave whatever I was doing several times a day, which annoyed my wife and kids a lot.

I use B-Renderon now to run a large number of consecutive renders during the day or over night without having to open and start renders again and again.

So, Chanfiroly, you made my day! Thank you!

[Chanfiroly]

Thank you very much, it’s awesome to read such a review!

[Chanfiroly]

Version 1.4 is released!

New straightforward scenes selection workflow, ability to choose external blender rendering scripts, and improvements for still frames rendering workflow.
First post updated.

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

Chanfiroly,

This addon looks quiet useful. Is their a way to specified a camera to render without creating a new scene?

[norka]

Is there a way to set which GPUs you want to use? Like if I have three GPUs, could I have GPUs 2 & 3 rendering in B-Renderon and be working on setting up another scene in Blender using GPU 1?.. Not sure if it is relevant, but I use E-Cycles 2.81 (usually fresh versions). Please advise someone. This is a burning question, since I am jamming on a bunch of animations…

[Chanfiroly]

Hi!
Not in a direct way, since hiddenly b-renderon interacts with blender trough blender’s command line and as far as I know it doesn’t have any direct commands for changing the gpu. B-renderon does allow you to choose scripts to use for your blends in the queue so if there’s a script out there that allows to do that you can definetely use it with b-renderon. I might work on something like that myself in the future but there’s several other todo’s im working on before.
Apart from that, a few months ago a user of B-renderon told me he was using it with multiple gpus trough some nvidia appliation that allowed him to assign different gpus to different blender executables, so when adding files to the queue in B-renderon it was just a matter of assigning the different blender versions to different files so that they got rendered with different gpus. If you are using Nvidia and that sounds like a good solution I can contact this person and ask him for more information about that workflow.

Thanks for your interest in B-renderon.

[Chanfiroly]

I’m very sorry, I missed your question somehow. You mean your scene has different cameras and you want to render all of them, or choose one that’s different from the active one from B-renderon?

[norka]

Hey thanks. I have three 980Ti. If your guy has a way to make B-R use just GPU2 & GPU3, please see if he can post his methods here. And I’m not merely interested in B-Renderon, but an actual customer, for like a week or so. I’m lovin’ B-Renderon bro.

Also, I haven’t tried it yet, but as a temporary workaround, could I set my GPUs to render (2 & 3) in Prefs, save the blends I want to render with B-R, then set in Prefs to GPU1 as I work on the stuff I want to while rendering?.. Do you know if that works?

[eklein (Eric Klein)]

Chanfiroly,

Be able to choose a different camera than the active one. This way I could batch render the same scene with different cameras. Render all cameras could be another options.

For rendering Eevee scenes this others options would be nice.

1. Pick which OpenGL device B-Renderon is rendering. In multi-graphics card setup it cuts time dramatically.
2. Be able to render every other frame or other multiples.

For example with two graphics card I can simultaneous render the same scene with graphics card # 1 rendering odd frames and graphics card # 2 rendering the even frames. This cuts the Eevee rendering time in half.

[Chanfiroly]

I investigated it a bit more. I don’t know if the trick works on linux, but there’s info on how to do it on windows in this other thread: Eevee and multiple graphics cards
To use this with b-renderon you must have a couple of different copies of blender in your pc, and via the nvidia application assign different gpus to the different blender executables. Then in B-renderon you set your different files to be rendered with the different copies of blender. Currently b-renderon let’s you choose the blender path and it looks for the “blender” binary there, but in a coming release I’ll make it so that it let’s you choose binaries, so you can use different blender executables in a same blender folder.
As for the temporary workaround that you mention, it would work for cycles choosing different devices, which is a property of the scene. Changing the preference would also work as long as the new preference isn’t saved at the moment b-renderon calls blender.
Hope my reply is not too confusing, english is not my first language!

[Chanfiroly]

Ah, I see. The choosing different cameras should be done with a python script, that you would assign to the items in your queue in b-renderon. I think there were a couple of scripts out there that did that, will investigate.
Regarding the multi graphics card setup, please se my answer to norka in the previous post, we were talking about something similar.

[norka]

Thanks for the info. I’ll need to revisit this next week.