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#brender v0.5 alpha

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##Intro Brender was first developed as an in-house organic render queue management tool. For this very reason it does keep some obscure and unstable things, use at your own risk. We will make all our possible to help you, but some things are weird :)

###Important Remarks Security: Brender web interface was not designed to be accessed from internet, please keep it on a trusted local network. There is absolutely no security guaranteed.

##0. System requirements In order to use brender, you need a machine able to run the following software:

• Apache (or any other web server software)
• MySQL (possibly with a frontend such as phpMyAdmin)
• PHP (version 5 or higher)
• Blender (version 2.5 or higher)
• Terminal or Console access

On the OSX platform, brender runs flawlessy through the MAMP suite.

##1. Installation procedure You will need Apache MySQL access on the machine you plan to use as server.

• Create a network drive/folder on the server machine that all computers will be able to access, for the rest of the document we will call this folder brender
• Unzip (or git clone) files to brender
• Point apache documentRoot to brender folder, or create an alias
• Go to your MySQL administration and create a new user called brender, make sure this user can access MySQL remotely, from any host (it is needed by the clients who do not access the MySQL database locally, but remotely)
• Create a new database called brender.
• Visit the webpage /install/index.php to continue the installation. It should detect and create the database structure needed. It should also create the following folders in your brender root :
  • blend (where the blend files will be placed)
  • blender_bin (blender remote install folder)
    • mac (this folder will contain the blender.app file)
    • linux (for linux binary)
    • windows (for windows binary)
  • thumbnails
  • render
  • logs

In order to have working clients on Linux you need to install the following packets on each node: php5, php5-cli and php5-mysql.

##2. Using brender

###setting the machines up In the web interface go to the clients tab, and add a new client. Enter a unique name for the client. On your server, in a terminal start the server by typing php brender_server.php. In the client machine, start also a terminal and type php brender_client.php CLIENTNAME. Back to the web interface check to make sure the client is in the client list, and is idle. You can click on disable to disable it, then click enable to re-enable it. Make sure you have installed blender in the brender/blender folder with the mac/linux/ windows version you want to use. Or use the custom blender path option on each client.

###managing projects In the web interface, go to settings tab and click the manage projects button at bottom. You can now create a new project. Give it a title and type in the different paths. The blend path is the exact path needed to access the .blend files of your project from the brender root folder. That means that for instance on a mac you can access files on a remote volume by typing /Volumes/my_remote_volume/my_cool_project/blend/scenes in the mac_blend.

###adding a job to render Click the new job button in the menu. Choose a project from the list. Type the name of the scene (in the sintel example it would be 01) Type the name of the shot (which is actually the blend file name) so in our example it would be 01_01_sintel_enters. Choose fileformat, config, chunks, starting frame, ending frame. If Directstart is thicked, the job will directly start rendering, otherwise it will be set to waiting.

##3. Additional infos :

Windows Compatibility :

Brender has been tested to work with windows. A good trick is have a network drive (like Z:) and write absolute paths in the project blend (for instance Z:\y_project\scenes) and output path (Z:\y_project\renders) .

Example structure :

Typical 3d project folder structure that works well with brender ) : lib/ chars/ sintel.blend dragon.blend dog.blend props/ weapon.blend shaman_hut.blend scenes / 01/ 01_01_sintel_enters.blend 01_02_guardian_attacks.blend 02/ 02_01_dragon_dances_the_lambada.blend 02_02_sintel_runs.blend render / 01/ 01_01_sintel_enters 01_02_guardian_attacks 02/ 02_01_dragon_dances_the_lambada 02_02_sintel_runs

Get help / support

You can try #brender on irc Freenode servers or contact per email oenvoyage@gmail or francesco.siddi@gmail Alternatively you can leave a message or report an issue in the issue tracker here in GitHub.

Technical remarks

Feel free to check this page: How brender works internally and other technical remarks.

F.A.Q.

You can also check the F.A.Q page for more infos.