by Nukkio·Rendering
Images © Nukkio. Used for product review; image policy.
Render for Catalog earns its place in the superhive library for turning a single lighting-and-framing setup into per-object renders, with camera lists, naming placeholders, and selective rendering built in.
Render for Catalog handles batch rendering in Blender when you have many objects that each need the same lighting and framing, such as images for catalogs, thumbnails, or icons. All objects must be present in the project, either directly or as links to objects and collections from other .blend files.
The workflow starts by choosing one object as a reference and setting its framing and lighting. You add a reference cube, resize and position it around the test object, then add your objects to the addon's list. A "Center objects on reference" button positions and resizes every listed object to fit inside the cube, aligning them for the chosen framing and lighting. Cameras, lights, and set objects each go into their own lists, and you set the render names before launching.
Multiple cameras let you capture different views of the same object. A selective view can hide all objects except the highlighted one or drive visibility by list index, and selective rendering re-renders only the checked objects. The render format and path follow the project settings.
Render For Catalog is best for blender artists producing consistent renders of many objects — catalog images, thumbnails, or icons — that share the same lighting and framing.
Render For Catalog is completely free to download and use.
Render for Catalog requires all objects to be present in the project, and that includes objects or collections linked in from other .blend files. Once they are in the scene, you add them to the addon's object list, and the "Center objects on reference" button positions and resizes each one to fit inside the reference cube for the framing and lighting you set. This lets you assemble a catalog from assets that live across several source files without first duplicating them into the current project.
Render for Catalog lets you set a render name and rename objects and cameras through a second editable name shown in each list. You can build names from placeholders: %on for the object's scene name, %or for its render name, %oi for its list index, %cn and %cr for camera names, and %fr for frame, with # to choose how many digits to use. When you work with multiple cameras, include the camera index or name so renders of the same object from different cameras do not end up with matching names.
Render for Catalog supports "fileoutput" nodes in the compositor, which lets you save a main image and thumbnails in one render, or different versions of the same image with or without alpha. For this to work, set the render input to the viewlayer the addon creates, named "_RFC_viewlayer", because the other viewlayers are turned off during the render. The name of the image saved by the fileoutput node is updated according to what you set in the addon, keeping the output naming consistent with the rest of your batch.
Render for Catalog includes a "Render animation" option that saves the animation as configured in your Blender project, which is useful for turnarounds or turntables. The saved output follows the project's format: with PNG it writes a sequence of images, and with an ffmpeg format it writes a video. Alongside this, selective rendering lets you check specific objects in the list and enable "Render only checked" to re-render just those, with the checks cleared automatically once that render finishes.
Render for Catalog is listed as free here. For current licensing terms and any details on support, it's best to check the developer's page on superhive, since terms can change over time. Once it is set up, the addon saves renders using the format and output path already defined in your Blender project, so it stays within your existing output settings. A demo video is also available.
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