LaunchControl BoltRenders inside Blender
LaunchControl is the official Blender add-on for BoltRenders, built to remove the hassle from rendering. It prepares your files automatically and connects Blender directly to the farm, giving you a faster, smoother workflow.
Six operators, in one Blender tab
The Preparation Suite works on the project you have open, finding what would break on a render farm and fixing it: scattered textures, absolute paths pointing at drives no render node has, simulations that were never baked. Export / Upload turns that prepared project into something that can leave your machine.
One drag, or three steps
Drop the .zip on Blender
Drag the file you downloaded straight onto the Blender window. Blender opens the install dialog. Confirm it and the add-on is in. No preferences, no file browser.
Your original project is never modified. LaunchControl reads your scene and builds a prepared copy beside it.
Download the .zipOpen Blender and go to Edit → Preferences → Add-ons, then open the dropdown on the top right and click Install from Disk…
Select the LaunchControl .zip and click Install from Disk. Leave Enable on Install ticked.
If you unticked it, enable the add-on by checking the box next to BoltRenders LaunchControl.
Either way Access LaunchControl from the N-Panel under the BoltRenders tab. Step by step in the install guide.
LaunchControl is the second door into the farm
The add-on prepares your file, and then it submits it. Everything after that is the farm doing what it does: a real test render of your own project, a fixed price before you commit, and your frames back in the render time it quoted. The Blender render farm page covers how the whole farm works.
Prepare
Check integrity, bake, consolidate. Four buttons and a save.
Submit
One button in the panel. The add-on packs the project and uploads it without a browser.
Evaluate
The farm test renders your actual project and returns four real frames. This step is free.
Launch
Read the fixed price and the delivery time, pick a tier, and start the render.
The price you are shown before you commit is the price you pay. It comes from rendering your own frames, not from a formula.
What changed
4 releasesAdded support for embedding used add-ons into project exports and farm submissions, enabling compatibility with third-party add-ons on the farm.
Includes performance optimizations and various bug fixes for improved stability.
Added the ability to connect the addon to your BoltRenders account.
Introduced a project integrity checker to identify missing assets, broken links, and incomplete simulations.
Implemented a “Bake All Simulations” feature to bake all physics simulations in the scene at once.
Added asset consolidation, which packs everything that can be embedded in the .blend file and copies the remaining assets into an "assets" folder inside the project directory.
Enabled direct project upload of a packed copy of the project to BoltRenders, submitting it for evaluation while keeping a persistent job record.
Added job monitoring, providing live updates on the evaluation and rendering status of submitted projects.
Updated packing mechanism to better support the management and packing of linked libraries.
Initial release providing the core functionality and foundational features, establishing the baseline for subsequent updates and improvements.
Questions
Is LaunchControl free?
Yes, LaunchControl is completely free to use with your BoltRenders account.
Which Blender versions does LaunchControl work with?
Blender 4.0 or newer, on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Does LaunchControl change my Blender files?
No. It collects your assets and creates a prepared copy for rendering, leaving your original project untouched. The Preparation Suite only edits your file when you press one of its buttons.
What leaves my machine when I submit?
The packed copy of the project you submitted, and nothing else. Your files stay isolated for the whole job and are deleted with it: when you delete the job, or seven days after the render completes.
Get it into Blender.
Version 2.2.0, for Blender 4.0 or newer, on Windows, macOS and Linux. Free with your BoltRenders account.