Uploading Blender files with dependencies

You can also read this in: English Deutsch

You probably know the problem when you want to share a Blender file with a colleague or upload it to a render farm for rendering and the only thing your colleague sees is pink. That’s because they forgot to pack the textures with it. Because of this problem I’ve already messed up quite a few renders, which is why we warn our users at rendergate before rendering if anything has been forgotten to be included. But a warning is only really useful if you can solve the problem, so what is the best way to send these files?

The easiest way to send textures is to put the relevant textures into the Blender file. You can do this by activating File > External Data > Pack Resources or if you want it to be packed automatically File > External Data >Automatically Pack Resources. This will pack most textures and fonts directly into the Blender file itself. This is quite sufficient for most people.

However, if you have more complex projects, this is not nearly enough. If your Blender file integrates other files or libraries, they need to be packaged separately. To pack them you can since 3.0 simply click on File > External Data > Pack Linked Libraries. If you have an older version, this is a bit more complicated. This function exists in older versions, but is nowhere to be found. Therefore you have to find it with the F3 search by searching for Pack Linked Libraries.

But if that would be all, it would be too easy. With this we have only packed the libraries themselves, but not the textures & other libraries they refer to. This step can easily be forgotten, which is why Rendergate warns you before rendering if any textures or libraries have been forgotten.

Unfortunately there is no elegant solution to wrap these dependencies as well. You have to go into the libraries themselves and enable Automatically Pack Resources & Pack Linked Libraries for each one. This leads to some problems when you are working on the libraries and especially the sub-libraries. As you have to manually repack the packed libraries all the time.

The same problem we have with simulation data, like smoke or water simulations, which are stored in a special cache folder. There is no way to include them in the blend file. Here you are completely on your own.