Remember my post about RenderPilot, the super simple drag-and-drop batch rendering tool for PCs? I was hoping someone would be able to port it to Mac sometime soon, but rather than wait for that to happen, I asked a friend of mine to come up with a little program that does the same thing. I’m thrilled to be able to offer here FREE for everyone!
We’re calling it Blender Batcher (we’re only at v1.1), and while it doesn’t have quite as many features as RenderPilot (yet), it does a perfect job of what I needed it for – rendering one project after another all night long. Since I was using a Mac at work, I’ve mainly used it there, and it’s great.
I can’t thank my friend Yas enough for making this for me (and for you!). Yas is our pipeline developer at CoSA VFX, and he’s a great software developer. Download it and give it shot, and if you’re a developer who wants to add some improvements, send me a message and I’ll make sure you have the code!
To use it, first you have to point it to the location of your Blender folder, then simply drag-and-drop your .blend files right onto the UI. They’ll stack up, and when you hit Render, it will begin rendering them, one after the other, using the projects output settings. Simple and easy!
And next time you open it, it should remember the location of your Blender app, so hopefully you don’t have to set that again. Unless you change versions of Blender, of course.
A note, however – if you close Batcher before your renders are completed, it DOES NOT stop the current render that is happening in the background. To do that, open your Activity Monitor, look for the Blender activity, and Force Quit.
Click HERE to get Blender Batcher v1.1 for OSX (Yosemite 10.1 and later, I believe).
Also, please consider donating by using the Donate button near the top right of this page. That will help me get more tool ideas out of my head and out into the actual world, which I will always share here!
Short video on how to use it is posted below, but seriously, it’s really easy. Drag and drop. Press button.
Hey! What happens if I have more than one scene in a blender file? Will it render all my scenes?
Whatever render setting you have setup in the project itself, that’s what it renders. It’s exactly the same as opening a blender project and pressing the render animation button. So if you have it setup to render like that, it should do it just fine.
Hello, the app looks good but I don’t understand why if I do start a rendering of 1 scene, the program keep to do so much renderings of the same scene and never stops.
Hi Gioele, it only renders what is set up in the project file. So if you only want to render a single frame, you have to set your frame range to only 1 frame. I’m guessing that’s the problem, based on what little you’ve described. Batcher has no settings, so it relies on you setting up your project EXACTLY as you would like it to render.
I did resolved it already, thanks so much anyway. The app is really useful
Great, glad you like it!
does this still work?
It needs recompiled for the latest Mac OS. I’ll try to get that done very soon!
Hi! I’m trying to use it with maverick, but it’s not working. Would you be able to compile it for the latest Mac OS?
Ugh, I keep forgetting to update it! I’ll check with my friend who created it for me, thanks for the reminder!
Great app. There are a couple of points, I would like to have a text manual for the possibility for translation into different languages from English. MacOS 10.14.6 & Blender 2.79 work, but saving export render files to /tmp/ . MacOS 10.14.6 & Blender 2.83.2 don’t work render. Thank you for this wonderful tool, unfortunately I cannot switch to the new Blender yet, but thanks anyway and we will wait for updates. As far as possible, I will try to support you and your project.
Thank for the notes. I really need to get this updated for more recent Mac OS’s.
Stupid question… But where are the renders saved in ?
Where ever you have specified inside the project file. Setup your output settings as you normally would, it will just use whatever is in the project file.