Description

easy Command Batch Render is an addon for Blender that uses power of Video Sequence Editor as a GUI for the addon to generate cross platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux) batch (.bat, .sh) files. Batch files can contain multiple scenes, can use different file formats and resolutions, can contain frame ranges or single frames, and can combine batch files into single batch file. Simple to use and powerful, relays on the built-in Blender features and imposes no duplication with existing Blender features.

In depth tutorial is found in this video: YouTube link

Why is the product created

While working on animated short, I have heavily relied on VSE (Video Sequence Editor) to call on multiple scenes, see how the shots work, ensuring I was satisfied with the direction and timing of the animation. I was heavily let down when I realized that rendering from the VSE was a nightmare. Hair was disappearing, volume fog was becoming opaque, rendering time was through the roof and file the was crashing due to the overflowing memory consumption. I had to finish the project by writing down the frames and going to individual scenes, and in those scenes rendering only frame ranges which made it to the finals. That process was excessively manual and although I did not have a memory or a speed problem, I would prefer even more efficient rendering via the Terminal window. After some research I could not find batch renderer utility that would offer me the freedom to visualize animation in advance using the power of Video Sequence Editor and after that to generate the batch file with time ranges and scenes which were used in VSE. I wanted to go step further so I could be sure what image sequences I was outputting, so and I added the overview text output file, and everything can be inspected by the user before committing to prolonged rendering time. I added the warnings first, ensuring the user will see only what is needed, and keep the extra info for the more curious users.

Logics behind this Addon

Addon is meant for the artists who don't want to get to technical with writing down the frame ranges in numerals, rather by seeing what works in the Sequencer. I added a Geometry Node Tree: easyFrameCounter that can be appended to any scene and used as a frame preview reference to original scene while in VSE