Blender Node-Based Rendering Editor

An Editor window or Panel to deliver a node based rendering workflow to Blender. Using this tool you can do away with the traditional layer based workflow and instead use nodes to determine various attributes with Blender like, what should be visible, render settings, aovs, and layer naming.

This tool aims to reduce the amount of steps and drastically simplify the rendering process with-in Blender. While mainly targeted toward vfx users and production houses, the everyday artist or hobist can find a significant workflow increases with this tool.

The Rendering editor also has a side view panel for viewing render nodes at the end of the tree, and a tool for mass material assignment. It also introduces the concept of Match Statements, which allows the user to define the objects for which attribute or material they want to change. There are also some operators in here like "type" and "hasattr" which can be utilised to better sift through a scenes objects.

RenderLayer version control is also handled automatically by the tool. Simply put the location of the render outputs into the "Output Paths" Property in the side Panel and the renderLayer nodes will read this property and auto name the outputlayers.

Command line rendering is also supported through the "-- --renderLayer {Insert renderNode Name here}" argument. The tool will read this on load and execute the renderNode prior to rendering occuring.

I originally developed this for my own pipeline at home and have done my best to make it easy for pipeline developers to integrate into their own companies. If you require the source code please let me know as it does differ slightly from the built version. You can then turn off the version control and renderLayernaming and introduce your own.

Installation is through the standard install from disk menu in blender. The tool is supported in version 4.1 and above for cycles, for Eevee only 4.1 is supported at this stage.

Please reach out through the support email if you run into any issues. I've gotten this working in my local pipe, a version of Blender that is off my home pipe and a beta tester. I have ideas for new nodes and new features and will be aiming to release updates to tool in the coming months. Feel free to join the discord as well so other might be able to help you out if you're having trouble and i'm not online to support. https://discord.gg/K8TyKAGN