Rendering from the Command Line

It is possible to render a OpenFLIP simulation from the command line without opening the Blender interface. This document will detail how to render your .blend file from the command line. You will need to have basic knowledge of how to use your OS command line utility to follow this document.

Rendering from the command line has been found to be the most stable way to render large amounts of simulation data and can prevent crashes, issues involving missing transformations and incorrect display, and other odd rendering behaviour.

For instructions on how to bake a simulation from the command line, see this document: Baking from the Command Line

For more information on using Blender from the command line, see the Blender Command Line documentation.

Rendering a Simulation

This method will render your .blend file exactly as if you had pressed the Animation operator within the Blender render properties panel.

To begin an animation render, open your command line utility and run the following command:

blender -b file.blend -a

Your render should now be running! Blender will display animation progress to the command line.

Example Command

Here is an example of how to use the command in the above section on the Windows operating system using CMD. Let's assume that:

1. Your Blender executable is located here:
   C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe
2. Your scene file is located here:
   C:\Users\Ryan\Documents\my_simulation.blend

Then your fully formed command to render the scene would be:

"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe" -b "C:\Users\Ryan\Documents\my_simulation.blend" -a