Exporting and Submitting from Blender

Two buttons take a prepared project out of Blender. One writes a portable archive you can send anywhere; the other uploads the project to BoltRenders and reports the evaluation back to you without leaving the viewport. This guide covers both, and the preference that carries your third-party add-ons along with them.

Before Either Action

Both buttons in the Export / Upload group build a packed copy of the project you have open. Three things decide whether that copy is any good, and all three are on your side of the button.

  • Bake your simulations first. Neither action bakes for you. A simulation with no cache packs as a simulation with no cache, and renders as nothing at all.
  • Run Consolidate Assets first. Both actions collect the project data on their own, but consolidating beforehand is the workflow that leaves nothing to chance. The Preparation Suite covers both of these.
  • Save the file. What gets packed is what is on disk.

The scene that is active when you save is the scene that gets rendered. Both the packed zip and the submission carry the scene you had open at the moment you saved and pressed the button, and that is the scene any farm will target by default. If your file holds several scenes, switch to the one you actually want rendered, save, and then export or submit.

Export Packed Zip

Export Packed Zip writes a fully packed, ready to render version of your project to a location you choose. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.

It is the right button when the project is going somewhere other than straight onto the farm:

  • Handing the scene to another artist, with every asset it depends on.
  • Archiving a finished job in a state that will still open in a year.
  • Uploading to a render farm through a browser, including BoltRenders itself.

The archive contains the project data, the assets, and, with Sync Add-ons enabled, the third-party add-ons your scene depends on. It is portable in the real sense: it does not reach back to your drives for anything.

Submit to BoltRenders

Submit to BoltRenders does the same packing and then sends the result to the farm for evaluation, without you opening a browser. It needs you to be signed in through the Account panel, which Installing LaunchControl covers.

What Happens After You Press It

The add-on packs the project, uploads it, and then reports the evaluation as it runs, live, in the panel. You stay in Blender for the whole thing.

Evaluation is a real test render of your own project, which is how BoltRenders arrives at a fixed price rather than an estimate. It is free, and on a heavy scene it can take a while. There is nothing to watch over: the job record persists, so you can close Blender and pick the status up later, either in the panel or on your dashboard.

When the evaluation finishes, the panel offers a button that takes you straight to your quote on the website: the price, the delivery time and the four test frames the evaluation produced.

From the Quote to the Render

Submitting does not start a render and does not charge you. It produces a quote. Choosing a priority level and committing happens on the website, where you can see the test frames next to the price.

From there the job follows the ordinary path: the statuses on your dashboard report its progress, and when it finishes you collect the frames as described in Downloading your rendered files. LaunchControl keeps reporting the status of what you submitted while all of that happens.

Third-Party Add-ons

If your scene depends on an add-on, the render node needs that add-on too. LaunchControl handles this with a single preference rather than a workflow.

Open Edit → Preferences → Add-ons, expand BoltRenders LaunchControl, and find Sync Add-ons in the Export / Upload Settings group. It is enabled by default. With it on, LaunchControl collects every add-on currently active in your Blender and ships them with the project, both when you submit a job and when you generate a packed zip.

That is the whole feature. There is no folder to build and no step to remember: what is active in your Blender when you press the button is what travels with the project. Because it works from the currently active add-ons, an add-on you have installed but not enabled does not get collected, which is usually what you want.

The Preparation Suite's Collect External Add-ons button does the same collection as a deliberate, standalone step, writing the folder into your project root so you can see it and control it. It is there for granularity, not because either export path requires it.

Which One to Use

Use Submit to BoltRenders when the project is going to the farm. It is fewer steps, it does not ask you to find a file in a browser, and it reports back without you leaving Blender.

Use Export Packed Zip when the project is going anywhere else, or when you want the package in your own hands first. The archive it writes is the same prepared project, so nothing is lost by taking that route and uploading it yourself.

Both leave your working file exactly as you saved it. Whichever you choose, the checklist in front of it is the same one: bake, consolidate, save, and know which scene is active.