flamenco/web/project-website/content/usage/variables/blender.md

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Blender

The location of Blender on the Worker, as well as its default arguments, can be configured via the blender and blenderArgs variables.

• If the Blender location is just plain blender, the worker will try and find those by itself. How this is done is different for the two programs, and explained below.
• In other cases, it is assumed to be a path and the worker will just use it as configured.

Here is an example configuration, which is part of flamenco-manager.yaml:

variables:
  blender:
    values:
    - platform: linux
      value: /home/sybren/Downloads/blenders/blender-3.2.2-release/blender
    - platform: windows
      value: B:\Downloads\blenders\blender-3.2.2-release\blender.exe
    - platform: darwin
      value: /home/sybren/Downloads/blenders/blender-3.2.2-release/blender
  blenderArgs:
    values:
    - platform: all
      value: -b -y

Just blender

If the {blender} variable is configured to be just blender some "smartness" will kick in. It will pick the first Blender it finds in this order:

1. On Windows, the worker will figure out which Blender is associated with blend files. In other words, it will run whatever Blender runs when you double-click a .blend file. On other platforms this step is skipped.
2. The locations listed in the PATH environment variable are searched to find Blender. This should run whatever Blender starts when you enter the blender command in a shell.
3. If none of the above result in a usable Blender, the worker will fail its task.

An explicit path

If the command is configured to anything other than blender, it is assumed to be a path to the Blender executable.

Setting Arguments

The {blenderArgs} variable can be used to provide arguments to Blender that are used on every invocation. Flamenco uses these by default:

• -b: run Blender in the background, so that it doesn't pop up a window.
• -y: allow executing Python code without any confirmation, which is often necessary for production rigs to work.

More can be found in Blender's Command Line Arguments documentation.