B R E N D O N

Blender Render Region Add-On

WHO

I'm a musician/music producer. I also develop audio plugin for Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to help me produce my music. 

Developing audio plugin essentially splits into two parts, which are Digital Signal Processor (DSP) and General User Interface (GUI).  3D skeuomorphism is common design choice for audio plugin GUI, because in analog world we are familiar to physical knobs and button to control audio signal–thus, Blender is a fine tool to design and creating assets for that purpose.

WHY

Preparing image assets for audio software development are long and tedious process. Each parameter control could have multiple image sprites, each with its own coordinate and size. Utilizing Blender Render Region we could render specific area from Camera view, for this purpose. 

While it is common in software development often times we need to re-draw and re-render image assets recursively–unfortunately, out of the box Blender doesn't have control for accurate tweaking, saving, recalling multiple render region. Hence to minimize error in whole creative process we need to ensure that each procedure are undoable and recallable, this is when BRENDON become handy.

WHAT

In a nutshell the following are what BRENDON can help with your creative work

• In Camera view, accurately set Render Region with X, Y Width and Height parameter in pixel unit.
• Each region could be saved into a list. and could be easily recalled, with a single click from the panel.
• All region coordinates X, Y Width and Height  could be exported to ready-to-use C++ header file which compatible with JUCE v.5+ framework.
• Option to spawn the current project, with the current setup into multiple copy(s) of .blend files with its each Render Region set from the list (e.g for batch render queue from CLI or third party apps).
• Alternatively, you can render each region (animation) sequentially in place directly from the panel. Note that : Blender will be frozen temporarily while rendering until it is finished.
• Each parameter X, Y Width and Height is a Blender property object, thus it can be animated if you need to, and it will be saved in the Blender data Scene in your .blend file. 
• Easy access for selected object(s) to toggle Ray Visibility. - Camera (e.g if you need to hide certain object in the render, make a shadow catcher, etc.).

To see it in action in more details please read DOCUMENTATION.

Despite of BRENDON specific development intention, I believe there would be a lot of benefit for having a pixel-accurate Render Region which could be saved and recalled from a list. 

This add-on might help you to minimize error while automating a lot of repetitive tasks, so you could be more focused on creative work. 

BRENDON might be just for you.

CHANGELOG

v.0.0.3 - March 5 2021

• Fix rounding issues.

v.0.1.0 - July 31 2021

• Fix rounding issues.
• Storing region coordinates in floating numbers (not backward compatible with previous version).

• New feature : Camera Overlay
  

  BRENDON provides shortcut to access Blender's active camera overlays which help when framing composition.

  
  

v.0.2.0 - August 8 2021

• Fix W and H value not updating when changing X and Y value, if Width and or Height are not locked.
  
• New feature : Auto set render region from last selected object
  

  Brendon could set render border from last selected object automatically.
  

  
  

v.0.3.0 - August 9 2021

• Camera overlay panel minimized by default.
  
• New feature : Change camera overlay color on the fly (with default theme)
• New feature : Auto set render region from last selected object with margin (up to 64 pixels)
  

  

  
  

  v.0.9.0 - March 23 2022

  
  
• Added Update Region button, to update selected region from current render region.
  
• Compatibility check with Blender v.3.1.

v.1.0.0 - August 3 2022

• Render region coordinate list (x, y, w, h) export to SVG file. Each render region would be drawn as rectangle.

v.1.0.1 - February 27 2023

• Bug fix: Phyton error message when saving. object.cycles_visibility.camera have been renamed to object.visible_camera related to (Blender API changes).