Blender Crashes after a few Renders from a Batch Script

Question

On Windows 7 I am rendering a series of animations from Blender in a batch script that looks like this:

call "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe" -b "E:\Project.blend" -S Scene1 -o "E:\exports\Fredericksburg1\Fredericksburg1_" -F JPEG -s 001 -e 435 -a
call "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe" -b "E:\Project.blend" -S Scene2 -o "E:\exports\Fredericksburg2\Fredericksburg2_" -F JPEG -s 001 -e 480 -a
call "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe" -b "E:\Project.blend" -S Scene3 -o "E:\exports\Fredericksburg3\Fredericksburg3_" -F JPEG -s 001 -e 180 -a

My problem is that after rendering one or two files, the rest of the Blender instances crash immediately after reading the preferences. The crash file just has this:

# Blender 2.69 (sub 0), Revision: 60995

It is not related to which project I use, usually only the first one or two render. I have tried a few things, making sure the computer didn't go to sleep or even the screen go blank, play around with the .bat file, but I haven't been able to get anything to consistently work. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You could change from a batch script to a python script. You can call the python script on startup by adding a parameter to the call like so:

call "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe" -b "E:\Project.blend" -P pythonScript.py

the python script would look somewhat like this:

pythonScript.py:

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

renderInformation = {
    'Scene1': (r'E:\exports\Fredericksburg1\Fredericksburg1_', [1, 435], 'JPEG'),
    'Scene2': (r'E:\exports\Fredericksburg2\Fredericksburg2_', [1, 480], 'JPEG'),
    'Scene3': (r'E:\exports\Fredericksburg3\Fredericksburg3_', [1, 180], 'JPEG'),}
# you can use any slash and just copy-paste the path from the explorer
# as long as it doesn't end with a "\'"

@persistant
def callbackFunc(context=None):
    try:
        sceneIdent, info = renderInformation.popitem() # get the next scene to render
        scene = bpy.data.scenes[sceneIdent] # get the actual scene
        bpy.context.screen.scene = scene # set the scene
        (scene.render.filepath,
         (scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end),
         scene.render.image_settings.file_format) = info # extract information
        bpy.ops.render.render(animation=True) # render as animation
    except:
        pass # then the list is exhausted and we can end the process

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if callbackFunc not in bpy.app.handlers.render_complete:
        bpy.app.handlers.render_complete.append(callbackFunc) # we register a callback after each render
    callbackFunc() # and call it ourselves at first

This just keeps blender down to one instance and might be worth considering anyways if you want to get deeper into the action, with more scenes to render etc. A batch script for that seems quite irrational, idk :)

I hope this fixes the problem for you, if not, then you might consider taking a look at your CPU-loading, maybe your scenes are just too big :? I don't think so since two render good but you never know. Tell me if there is anything you're interested about or if the proposed "solution" doesn't work.