A little helper script to render .obj files (such as from the stanford shapenet database) with Blender.

Tested on Linux, but should also work for other operating systems. By default, this scripts generates 30 images by rotating the camera around the object. Additionally, depth, albedo, normal and id maps are dumped for every image.

Tested with Blender 2.9

To render a single .obj file, run

blender --background --python render_blender.py -- --output_folder /tmp path_to_model.obj

To get raw values that are easiest for further use, use --format OPEN_EXR. If the .obj file references any materials defined in a .mtl file, it is assumed to be in the same folder with the same name.

To render a whole batch, you can e. g. use the unix tool find:

find . -name *.obj -exec blender --background --python render_blender.py -- --output_folder /tmp {} \;

To speed up the process, you can also use xargs to have multiple blender instances run in parallel using the -P argument

find . -name *.obj -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 -P3 -I {} blender --background --python render_blender.py -- --output_folder /tmp {}

Here is one chair model rendered with 30 different views:

or a teapot with all available outputs