Drentsoft Blender Console Launcher Faster Blender Rendering Without All the Typing

What is Drentsoft Blender Console Launcher?

Drentsoft Blender Console Launcher is a Java UI based application for quickly launching the popular open-source 3D package Blender from the command line, enabling quicker rendering without all the typing.

Why Drentsoft Blender Console Launcher?

Running apps from the command-line can involve a butt ton of typing and one little typo can cause much anguish with trying to correct it. Drentsoft Blender Console Launcher is designed to quickly take the hassle out of running Blender from the command line for smaller projects and studios who don't need or want to use the network rendering plugin.

Why a Java Client?

There are a couple of reasons. The first is I'm more comfortable with Java than with Python. Second, in my testing I found that I could not launch an instance of Blender from itself then close the first instance without it also closing the second instance. This does not apply with launching a Java application from within Python.

Disclaimers etc

This application comes with no warranty at all. That said it is rather simple and has been tested quite thoroughly both by the developer and a professional tester and any bugs or quirks should not cause major problems in a production pipeline.

License

Drentsoft Blender Console Launcher has no official license at the moment, you can download, redistribute and use the application as you like provided you give credit to the original developer and do not charge for redistributed copies. Currently this application is NOT open-source but if there's enough demand and/or it's required

Download

Please download the Java App

Future plans

1. A Blender add-on that will quickly launch the Java app, pre-populated with the current file's settings then close Blender ready to be relaunched in the more render-friendly no-UI mode
   Current status:
   • The Java app is more or less set up for this. I just need to learn how to add a button to the render panel in Blender.

Known Bugs

• Mild - The UI app displays the Blender output for keeping track of how the render's doing. Currently on very short renders the text pane updates too fast and the UI can't keep track of the caret position making it hard to read the latest Blender output. This doesn't seem to have much if any real performance hit on Blender itself though on slower computers or really large scenes the constant UI updating may have a more noticable effect. If you find this to be the case, try using the app to generate the command and then copy it into your console/terminal/command prompt of choice. This should still be faster than typing the masssive command out manually.