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Blender Example

Get Prepared

If you haven't already done so, Download the Companion App.

You do not need to have Blender installed for this example, and there are no textures or other dependencies. The Blender file is self contained. Download it from the link below.

  • Download: bmw_half_turn_low.blend
  • Move it to a working directory. For this example /Users/me/conductor_blender/. Substitute your actual directory where necessary.

Note

If you are working with your own scene and are on Windows, we strongly recommend you package up your scene into a single .blend file. It makes your scene portable and avoids the need to browse for external assets.

The scene contains a camera flying 180 degrees around a pair of BMWs and is based on the popular BMW demo by Mike Pan from the Blender demos site.

bmw

Configure the Submission

  • Open the Companion app, sign in to your account, and go to the Submission Kit page.
  • Fill in the fields in the General tab as illustrated below. You may have to choose a different instance type and a project that exists in your account.

general

You can browse for an output directory for your rendered frames. This directory must not contain any of your input files.

Note

Due to a limitation in the file dialog, the button to choose a directory is labeled "Upload."

Task Template

The Task Template is where you specify the CLI command to run on each render node in the cloud.

  • Enter the following blender command in the Task Template field. Be sure to substitute your actual working directory.

blender /Users/me/conductor_blender/bmw_half_turn_low.blend -E CYCLES --render-output /Users/me/conductor_blender/renders/render_ --render-format EXR  --render-frame <chunk_start>  --background -noaudio

Notice the --render-output flag points to a file in the output folder. If you like, you can refer to the contents of the output directory with a token:

  • Select the text /Users/me/conductor_blender/renders then click the <> icon and choose output_path.

The output path in the template changes to <output_path>/render_, and the resolved render commands in the submission preview will now always point to the chosen output directory.

Take a moment to save the state of the submission.

  • Choose Save As from the More menu. Save the file as bmw_turntable_render.json.

generalSave

Notice the token: <chunk_start> in the task template. Go to the Preview tab and you'll see it is replaced with a different frame number for each of the 180 tasks.

File Dependencies

You may have noticed in the Preview tab that the upload_paths section was empty. The Blender submission relies on just one file, bmw_half_turn_low.blend, so you'll need to tell the submitter to upload it.

  • Go to the Files tab and click the folder icon to browse for the blender scene file. Check the Preview tab to check that the file is included in the upload_paths field.

files

Software

To configure your job environment, you must select the set of software and plugins it requires.

  • Go to the Software tab and choose a recent version of Blender.

software

If you head back to the Preview tab now, you'll see the environment section contains Blender's paths.

Python Location

The submission is processed using Conductor's client-side Python API, and therefore Python 2.7 must be available. You can check this in the [Settings page][settings].

Submit

You can now press Submit. You should see some activity in the status bar. If you click the small icon in the status bar, you'll see the complete log where you can identify submission errors, if any. If the submission is successful, a popup appears with a link to the jobs page.