by Dennis Hafemann·Rendering
Images © Dennis Hafemann. Used for product review; image policy.
Camera Orbit Render earns its place in the Blender library by turning the usual curve, follow-path and track-to setup into a single-button orbit render, with advanced options for driving the camera from a custom focus object.
Camera Orbit Render is a Blender addon from Dennis Hafemann that renders a series of images from a camera circling around your subject. Instead of building a curve-circle, making the camera follow a path and adding a track-to, you select your camera as the active object, optionally select one or more objects to orbit around, and start the render.
The addon creates a focus empty at the center point of your selected objects, or at the 3D cursor location when nothing is selected, then duplicates the selected camera and parents the copy to that empty so your originals stay untouched. It orbits on a z-axis base, renders each image with F12, saves it and steps to the next angle. You control the rotation direction, the start, end and total number of images, and the output directory.
Advanced options let you supply your own focus object and use its rotation and local orientation for orbits beyond the standard z-axis path. A demo video is available.
Camera Orbit Render (Addon) is best for rendering product images or image sequences of an object from a camera orbit in Blender.
Camera Orbit Render (Addon) is completely free to download and use.
Camera Orbit Render installs from a downloaded .zip file. In newer versions of Blender you may be able to drag and drop the .zip directly into Blender, which installs and enables the addon. In older versions, open Preferences, go to the Add-ons or Extensions section, choose Install from disk and select the .zip file, then enable the addon afterward if it isn't already active. From there you select your camera and start rendering.
Camera Orbit Render leaves your existing scene intact while it works. It creates a new focus empty at the center point of your selected objects, or at the 3D cursor location when nothing is selected, then duplicates your selected camera and parents that copy to the empty. The orbiting and rendering happen with the duplicated camera, so your original camera and objects stay untouched throughout the process.
Camera Orbit Render circles the camera on a z-axis base and renders one image at each step. You define the start, end and total number of images, and the addon divides a full 360° orbit accordingly, so a total of 8 produces an image every 45°. Filenames are zero-padded to match the total count, and rendered images save to the output directory you set, which can be relative to the .blend file using the // prefix.
Camera Orbit Render is listed as free in this catalog. For current licensing details and any terms, check the developer's page. The addon is at version 1.0 and orbits a duplicated camera around the 3D cursor or your selected objects to render a series of images, with advanced options for using a custom focus object and its rotation when you need control beyond a simple z-axis orbit.
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