Using Rigid Body Simulations with Render Farms
How to use rigid body simulations with Renderjuice, the Blender render farm.
Status: ✅ Fully Supported
Rigid body simulations are fully supported on Renderjuice and should work as expected out of the box 🎉 without much hassle.
The key requirement is that you bake your rigid body simulations before uploading your scene. You can do this in two ways:
- Bake to Keyframes: This converts the simulation into keyframes embedded within your .blend file.
- Bake All Dynamics: This creates a simulation cache that needs to be included with your .blend file when uploading.
Example Files
Below are two example .blend files demonstrating the correct and incorrect setup for rigid body simulations.
Unbaked Example Incorrect ❌
Unbaked .blend file with rigid body simulation
Baked Keyframes Example Correct ✅
Baked .blend file with rigid body simulation
Baked Dynamics Example Correct ✅
Baked .blend file with rigid body simulation cache
Both files feature the Blender Suzanne monkey and a cube dropping onto a plane, showcasing how baking affects the simulation during rendering.
Instructions
To use rigid body simulations with Renderjuice (and likely other render farms), you need to bake the simulation. There are two methods to do this:
- Bake to Keyframes: This converts the simulation into keyframes embedded within your .blend file.
- Bake All Dynamics: This creates a simulation cache that needs to be included with your .blend file when uploading.
Baking to Keyframes or Baking Dynamics
Set Up Your Rigid Body Simulation
Create your scene with the rigid body simulation. This might involve adding rigid body physics to objects like the cube and monkey mesh and setting up the simulation settings as desired.
Bake to Keyframes
After setting up your simulation, you need to bake it to keyframes.
To bake the rigid body simulation to keyframes:
Select all the objects involved in the rigid body simulation.
Go to the Object menu at the top, navigate to Rigid Body > Bake To Keyframes.
In the pop-up dialog, set the frame range and baking options as needed, then click OK.
Baking Rigid Body Simulation to Keyframes
Save Your Scene
After baking, make sure to save your .blend file. The baked keyframes are now part of your scene.
Upload and Render
Upload your .blend file to Renderjuice and start your render. Since the simulation is baked to keyframes, it will render correctly on the farm.
There’s no need to upload any cache files or additional assets since the animation data is stored within the .blend file.
Checklist
- Did you bake your rigid body simulation? Whether to keyframes or as a cache.
- Did you save your .blend file after baking? Ensure all changes are saved.
- If using an external cache, did you include the cache files when uploading?
- Are all necessary objects included in the bake? Only selected objects or those in the cache will have their simulations baked.
FAQ
Having trouble or something doesn’t seem right? Just chat with us—we’re happy to help and respond quickly!