DESCRIPTION
Google Colab is a Free tool you can use to Render Your Blender Animations.
In this video, I talk about how to set up your blender project and How to use Colab to render your animation project without any issues.
- Colab Template Notebook: check attachments
- Blender Releases: https://download.blender.org/release/
- Blender Command Line Arguments: https://bit.ly/cmdlineArg
Video Link: https://youtu.be/cGcVKHpbKQo
Final Cell Description
- -b = Run in Background
- $filename = which .blend file we need to run
- -noaudio = no audio in this project
- -E = Render Engine
- -o = where the file is going to save and its name. After the final “/”, you can give your render file a name.
- -s and -e = Start and End frame
- -a = animation
- -F = File format of the rendered output. This will overwrite your settings in the .blend file.
- CUDA = you can tell which type of GPU you want to use for rendering. You can change this to “OPTIX” if you prefer.
PROS AND CONS
Remember this is a free cloud computing option. So it definitely comes with both advantages and disadvantages. Yes, you can upgrade to a paid version but if you want to pay for rendering your product, then there are plenty of better options out there than Colab.
Pros:
- All you need is to have your browser open. Don’t need to wait until Rendering is done to do other performance-heavy work.
- Better privacy for your projects. Compare to something like “Sheepit Render farm”
- You can use it for Baking Simulations as well.
Cons:
- always need to have Browser open. (Paid version you can close your browser)
- Need to check the rendering once in a while. If it detects no activity, it usually disconnects you from the session.
- Limited time for a session. This only gives you a few hours per Day to use Colab. You have to wait for a GPU session. Connecting to a CPU session is just wasting time.
- Not Crazy fast. At least in my case I only found it 90%-200% faster. Yes, it could take more time than your computer sometimes.