Preparing your Project
A guide on using render farms with Blender.
Preparing to work with render farms can frequently be difficult due to differences between the render nodes and your local computer. To elaborate, the nodes (the computers which we render your file on) need to have the same dependencies that you do on your local machine for your render.
When working on a .blend file that is going to be sent off to a render farm. We recommend you take action in the following ways.
Pack External Assets
You can pack or send along any assets that are considered external data into your Blender file. The simplest method to do this is by going to File > External Data > Pack Resources . However, this will only work with certain types of Data Blocks and is a solution for simpler Blender files.
Data blocks that are capable of being Packed are Fonts, Images, Libraries, and Sounds as of Blender 3.6.
You must then save the file because Blender will not automatically save your file at this point. We recommend saving it as a separate file with the suffix _PACKED.blend
Pack Linked Libraries
Packing Linked Libraries is useful when an add-on or a data block that you use references another .blend file on your computer. By going to File > External Data > Pack Linked Libraries you pack those linked .blend files directly into one .blend file. You must then save this .blend file again to ensure it is packed.
Set to Relative Paths
When utilizing external assets that cannot be packed as mentioned above. It is highly recommended that all links are set to relative. This way when you send a zip file to our render nodes with files linked, we can simply unzip it on our end and render it with those links preserved.
Packing Add-Ons
Some add-ons have functionality specifically built to support packing and baking into your .blend file.
For example, Botaniq has great documentation that guides you on how to use Botaniq with render farms.
Other add-ons have a specific “Bake” or “Pack” button to automatically do this for you.
Please refer to your add-on’s documentation for this.
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