In a hot weather with multiple laptops running in the same room, the last thing I wanted to do was render, which I did and instantly the cooling fans turned on, result, the room turned uncomfortably warm.

Ten minutes later, I gave up on the render process as I did not want to sit in this oven and decided to fire up my Raspberry Pi 2, and checked to see if a build of Blender is available in the repository, turns out there is a built not the latest built but has everything I need for the render.

I highly recommend doing this on a Raspberry Pi 2 or higher, as it has enough RAM for decent render and CPU that can handle BVH (Bounding Volume Hierarchy) duplication without any issues.

Announcement: I will be publishing the result of the benchmark once they have been completed, you can subscribe via email to get notified or leave a comment.

Installing it is like another application.

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S blender

Raspbian

sudo apt-get install blenderCode language: JavaScript (javascript)

The good thing about Blender is it has CLI support, which lets you render without firing up the GUI.

blender -b file.blend -o /render/frame_##### -F PNG -f -2Code language: PHP (php)

Let’s break down the flags used above.

-b (render in background without GUI)

file.blend (location of the blend file to be rendered)

-o (Location to where the render will be saved)

-F (Override the image format specified in the blend-file and save to an PNG image.)

-f (Frame)

To learn more about the command line you can visit the official documentation. If the older links don’t work or give an error, try this link out.

Darryl Dias

I’m Darryl. I’m a 3D Artist, Programmer and Linux enthusiast. On this site I share my insights, tips and tricks, tutorials, methods and best practices.

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