This addon allows rendering high quality images and animations. The addon converts the simulation scene into a blender scene and then renders the scene into image(s). Blender is an open-source 3D modeling, animation, rendering and video editiging software. The Addon utilizes the new real time render engine Eevee available in the Blender 2.8. Rendering can be done as a backround task, which will output the result automatically into a image file or a video straight from Visual Components or the scene can be opened in the Blender for further tweaking. Animations can be rendered to video files.
Material related properties on separate tab in GUI
Animation recording generates a video (avi) file automatically after everyframe is rendered.
Bloom intensity property
Tooltips
EDIT2 2019-09-19 (15:26CET):
New download link. Previous link was wrong.
EDIT3 2019-12-12 (17:16CET)
New version 2.0.2 that supports Blender 2.8.1 version.
Texture scaling factor has changed. Note this if you are defining custom materials with the csv table.
EDIT4 2020-06-01
New version 2.0.3 that supports Blender 2.82 version.
Minor bug fixes and performance tweaks.
Sparks emitter under lights tab to visualize e.g. welding.
EDIT5 2020-09-29: New improved version 2.1.0.
Itâs faster: Both export from VC and import to Blender optimized
User configurable property defaults (defaults.xml)
Reset properties to defaults button on advanced tab
New shadow catcher floor style (Set Env map not visible and 0 strength, choose as floor style and add hard lighting like a sun light)
Path blender.exe not hard coded. Asks user to locate the executable if not found in the default location.
Supports non ascii characters in the uri paths. Windows usernames with non ascii characters were causing issues before.
Opens the output image automatically after rendering
Default output file is now under the default windows Pictures folder
Auto-increments the output file name (doesnât overwrite an existing render)
User can choose AVI or MP4 as the video container (avi for reliability or mp4 for portability)
Uses Windows %temp% folder when porting the scene from VC to Blender
Other minor bug fixes
EDIT6 2021-08-25: New version 2.2.0 available
Whatâs new 2.2.0:
Edge rendering option on the advanced tab to allow toon shader type visualization
Light strength value is now keyframed allowing animation of light brightness changes
Floor bumpmap strenght controllable
Improved unicode support
Handles corrupted material textures (e.g. missing texture file doesnât crash the render)
Fixes an issue that caused Spot light type lamp to misorient
Improved image framing. Default camera FOVY set to 33 as VC default FOVY is 35
Fixes an image framing issue in portrait mode
Lights appear in front of the camera when adding lamps to scene instead of behind the camera
Area light placeholder model redesigned
Other minor bug fixes and performance improvements
This version 2.2.0 available here ==> download <==
Tested with: 4.3.1 (2021-04-26) and Blender 2.93.1
EDIT 2022-09-06:
no changes to the addon
Fixed the broken download link to the addon on this post
cleaned up the instructions
EDIT 2023-09-14:
Whatâs new 2.3.0:
added support for the hierarchical dynamic component structures (e.g. PM assembly products)
support multiple different PM products that are using the same base component with different parameters.
video output resolution respects now the given resolution (before only the rendering used the resolution but the video file was always fullhd landscape)
fixing an issue related to missing materials in some layouts with robots (SmartMaterial related issue)
improved transparent material handling
added SimplifiedTransparent mode to support rendering transparent objects inside other transparent objects
animation recording start and end time donât keep resetting to 0 and 5
added new default floor textures
added new default LightPresets
exposure and lighting defaults tweaked
control the backdrop color when Env map is set to not visible (use image or ColorRGB setting)
blenderer addon version number not showing in the ui anymore
animation frame index calculated based on the time stamp to ensure correct animation sync (this feature helps only in VC 4.8 version)
Tested and developed with VC 4.8 + Blender 3.6
when recording animation with it I see that the works components appear allright, just then they get smaller in every next frame, until they dissapear.
Is it normal for the rendering to take very long. I have an animation that lasts about 2 minutes and 40secs, at 1080p resolution recorded at ~60fps. That amounts to ~9934 frames. Each frame takes about 3 seconds to render and that makes it about 8 hours and 30 minutes for the entire animation. Is that normal?
That sound pretty okay. 3 secs per frame. You graphic card is quite a monster though. Iâm not sure if you can tweak something on the blender side to get better performance from that card. But thatâs a topic I canât help you with. I tested with a single UR robot moving in the scene, I get a little less than 2s per frame withn fullHD resolution and 16 samples.
This looks nasty. It could be that the python is struggling to access the file for writing. Looks like your Documents folder is on a server drive. Could you try to move the addon to a local folder with write permission. You can install the addon from any folder by dragging and dropping the init file from the command folder to the VC 3d scene. Just make sure that the addon is not already added (i.e. remove it from the My Commands folder for this test)
That redering performance sounds pretty okay. 3 secs per frame. Your graphic card is quite a monster though. Iâm not sure if you can tweak something on the blender side to get a better performance from that card. But thatâs a topic I canât help you with (coz I donât know). I tested with a single UR robot moving in the scene and I get a little less than 2s per frame with the fullHD resolution and 16 samples.
Hi, I have been using Blenderer addon for some time without problems, but since yesterday, everytime I try to render a model that I imported from .step geometry, it takes unusually long time and then it freezes. In the past, I had no problem with rendering whole layouts with imported models and now i cannot render even one simple machine. The problem occurs when VC is exporting layout to .obj files that happens before opening Blender. When I tried exporting whole layout to .obj manually it took around 2 to 3 minutes, while using addon I waited 30 minutes and nothing happened. I am running VC version 4.1.2 and Blenderer addon 2.0.1 on Blender 2.80. I tried reinstalling VC, addon and Blender, but without succes. Anyone experiencing same issue?
first of all: good job - really appreciate your work!
I recognized geometry is organized by material when exported to blender - do you have any workaround for obj. export where the feature tree remains like in VC ?
Not really. The geometry is organized like that for the sake of performance. It would require a quite a bit of editing to keep the VC feature structure.
If you need to keep certain things separate, separate them into nodes in VC and theyâll be separate items in Blender.
