blog

Introduction

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline: modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline.

Versions

Blender versions adapted on Qarnot:

If you are interested in another version, please send us an email at qlab@qarnot.com.

Starting a render

Please ensure that you have created a Qarnot account here.
Blender sample file can be found here. Please note that it needs to be unzipped before it can be used on Qarnot.

Uploading data

Before starting a render, data needs to be uploaded to a bucket named blender-in that will be used for the render.
It can be done with different methods:

1. Using a web interface, no code required:
   Create the bucket in Render’s bucket section and upload your data using the “Upload” button.
2. Using a S3 tool to download directly from your computer a large amount of data, no code required:
   Use one of the S3 tools presented here.
3. Using Python functions to allow integration to an existing pipeline:
   Use the Python SDK functions in the render script (add_directory, sync_directory, …).

Note: using one of the tools presented in S3 Data methods is strongly recommended, especially for large volumes of data.

Using the web interface

The 3D-tailored web interface Render can be used to start Blender renders.
A video tutorial is available here.

Using the Python SDK

Before starting a render with the Python SDK, a few steps are required:

• Retrieve the authentication token (here)
• Install Qarnot’s Python SDK (here)

Note: in addition to the Python SDK, Qarnot provides C# and Node.js SDKs and a Command Line.
Once everything is set up, the following script needs to be used to start the render.

Be sure you have copied your authentication token in the script (instead of <<<MY_SECRET_TOKEN>>>) to be able to launch the task on Qarnot.

blender.py

To launch this script, simply copy the following code in a Python script and execute python3 blender.py in your terminal.

Note: when one of the previous task constants is not filled, it will take the value contained by default in the file.

Monitoring and downloading results

At any given time, you can monitor the status of your task on the general web interface Console or on our 3D-tailored web interface Render.
The results will be stored in the blender-out bucket and can be retrieved with three methods:

• the download button in the Bucket section
• the download_results function from the Python SDK
• one of the S3 compatible tools for managing your data.

Support

That’s it! If you have any questions, please contact qlab@qarnot.com and we will help you with pleasure!

You can read more about Qarnot 3D use cases in our White Paper for 3D Animation and VFX.