Queue-render animations in Blender (Windows)

In this video we create two blender files with animations and queue them up with a Windows batch file in order to render them both out one after another:

Written version:

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Edited instructions 2016:

-Go the Blender installation folder and shift right click to open the command window there
-Type blender -b “path to file 1” -a “path to file 2” -a
-Hit enter

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Let’s begin by creating a quick animation for our camera.

We’ll add a location keyframe, move to frame 20, dolly in slightly, and then add a second keyframe.

Let’s also make the animation duration 20 frames.

Now we can head over to the render settings and change them as we please. This time we won’t, for the sake of speed, touch anything else besides the output file settings.

Here we will create a folder for our first render and also give the render a file name.

Now let’s save this Blender file and call it first project.

Then we’ll re-save our project with a different name. Let’s call this one second project.

To make it look different, let’s simply replace the default cube with Suzanne.

Now we can change the output settings for this animation so that it goes to it’s own folder.

Finally let’s save, and close blender. Then we’ll open up notepad for creating the batch file.

Here we will begin by typing in “cd” in order to browse to a directory. We will specify the file path for our blender installation as the destination. It’s typically under the program files inside c-drive. We can select the path and copy paste it in.

Then we’ll hit enter a couple of times and type in “blender” in order to start it and -b in order to start it only in the background.

Now we will simply copy-paste the file path of our first blender file. Here’s a cool windows tip: if you shift-right click on a file, you can choose “copy as path” in order to copy the file’s full path including the file name and extension.

After pasting it in, we’ll add -a, in order to render it as an animation.

Then we’ll copy paste the second blender project and add -a to it as well.

Finally let’s save the batch file with a .bat extension.

If we run this file, blender will begin by rendering the first project. After the first animation is finished, it continues by rendering the second one.

Thanks for reading and see you next time on One Minute Video Tutorials!