 | Blender Script without Opening Blender |  |
A great little example of using Blender scripts without actually opening the Blender - is to have to load a .blend file - render the output to a jpg and then close. We'll do all this in a single Python script.
If you've not already got one - create a simple test blender file called 'test.blend' - make sure it has a camera so you can render the output to an image (using the Blender renderer).
You cannot just run Blender python scripts directly through Python - you need to pass them into Blender! So you either need to add Blender.exe to the global system path or call it with the absolute location from the command terminal:
"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 4.1\blender.exe" --background --python myscript.py
This is what your myscript.py file looks like:
import bpy
import os
# Directory where the script is located
script_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
print(f'Script directory: {script_dir}')
# Output directory
output_dir = os.path.join(script_dir, "out")
os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)
# Path to the .blend file
blend_file = os.path.join(script_dir, "test.blend")
# Open the .blend file
bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath=blend_file)
# Set render settings
bpy.context.scene.render.image_settings.file_format = 'JPEG'
output_path = os.path.join(output_dir, "rendered_output.jpg")
bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = output_path
# Render and save
bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)
print(f"Render saved to: {output_path}")
# Optional: close Blender or reset the scene
bpy.ops.wm.quit_blender()
This little script lets you open and render the contents of the Blender file.
This might not seem very exciting - but it forms the foundation of more complex things - for example, you can open an existing file - and modify things - change textures, reposition the camera etc - and then render the output.
You can use this feature to 'automate' features - for example, if someone wants to generate an intro animation - you could alreayd have the intro animation all setup in Blender (saved to a file) - but someone could customize the background colors, text, textures - which can be updated dynamically in the script and the output video generated and saved out - without ever having to even open the Blender file.
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