[Feature Request] Add functionality to bake from the command line

[bholzer]

My rendering/baking pipeline is in the cloud, so much of my baking and rendering happens from the command line on a server, generally with some startup python script.

There is info here on how to bake blender's built-in fluids via Python: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/728/53213

Could you write documentation on how to do this in Flip?

[rlguy]

Hey bholzer,

I didn't have functionality for baking from the command line in mind when writing the baking process so this is not possible within the addon at the moment, but it is a great idea to have this! I have added this functionality and it will be available in the next version (1.0.4).

If you want to try it out now, here's how (assuming you are currently using version 1.0.3):

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You will need to replace the addon operators\bake_operators.py file with this modified version of the file: bake_operators.py

For example, my bake_operators.py file is located here:

C:\Users\ryanl\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons\flip_fluids_addon\operators\bake_operators.py

Once the file is replaced, a fluid simulation scene can be baked from the command line using the following script:

import bpy
bpy.ops.flip_fluid_operators.bake_fluid_simulation_cmd()

using the same command as you would baking with the built-in fluid simulator:

blender --background file.blend --python script.py

Notes: This script will resume the fluid simulation from the last computed frame in the cache. If you want to reset the simulation cache, you may do so through the Blender scene as usual or by running the following script:

import bpy
bpy.ops.flip_fluid_operators.reset_bake()

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I will add this to the documentation after some further testing and closer to the release of the next version.

[bholzer]

Awesome, thanks so much, this should make my life easy!

[rlguy]

Documentation for this feature has been added here: https://github.com/rlguy/Blender-FLIP-Fluids/wiki/Baking-from-the-Command-Line

This feature will be available in the next version update (1.0.4 available August 11th).