Project Folder Setup

The first step in deploying the Blender Studio Pipeline is to create the correct folder structure. Many of the tools used in Blender Studio require the following folder structure on each of your studio workstations. The following commands should be executed from the data folder.

1. Create the project root directory:

mkdir ~/data/your_project_name # Linux/Mac

mkdir %HOMEPATH%\data\your_project_name # Windows

2. Navigate to the project-tools folder:

cd ~/data/blender-studio-tools/scripts/project-tools # Linux/Mac

cd %HOMEPATH%\data\blender-studio-tools\scripts\project-tools # Windows

3. Create the base folder structure using the init_project_folder_structure tool, followed by the path to your new project:

./init_project_folder_structure.py ~/data/your_project_name # Linux/Mac

python init_project_folder_structure.py %HOMEPATH%\data\your_project_name # Windows

This will create the basic directories for your production:

• local: This is where the local copy of Blender and the add-ons will be installed.
• shared: This is the folder that should be shared over the network.
• svn: This is the version-controlled folder where the .blend production files will live.

4. Create the render directory (optional):

mkdir ~/data/your_project_name/render # Linux/Mac

mkdir %HOMEPATH%\data\your_project_name\render # Windows

This directory is used for the temporary storage of render files generated by Flamenco. This storage must be accessible by all computers using Flamenco for rendering; commonly, this is a Network Attached Storage of some kind. In this guide, our renders will live in the root of our project directory.