BlenderProc Publication Visualization

Publication-ready visualization of 3D objects and point clouds in seconds.

Mesh	Point Cloud	Mesh + Depth

Head over to the repository's GitHub Pages site for a prettier and more interactive version of this README!

Design philosophy: Following Andrej Karpathy and KISS.

Installation

Requires uv and Python 3.11.

uv pip install git+https://github.com/hummat/bproc-pubvis.git
uv run blenderproc pip install loguru tyro

The first call of blenderproc will download Blender. If you already have a local installation, you can use --custom-blender-path path/to/blender (this also needs to be used for all subsequent calls of blenderproc).

Basic Usage

To render a mesh (or point cloud if the input is one), simply run:

uv run blenderproc run main.py --data path/to/3d.obj

The following options can be added to:

• save the rendered image: --save path/to/output.png
• export the object: --export path/to/output.obj (use .glb for a web-friendly format)
• render the mesh as point cloud: --pcd True (or a target count, e.g. --pcd 2048)
• render the mesh as depth image: --depth ray_trace (use z_buffer for Blender’s z-buffer)
• render the mesh as point cloud from projected depth image: --pcd True --depth ray_trace
• keep the mesh when rendering as point cloud or wireframe: --keep-mesh (used in the Mesh + Depth example above)
• create an animation: --animate turn (use --frames for length, default 72, and --fps for playback speed, default 20)

You can test you render settings using any of the Blender primitives (monkey, cube, sphere, cone, cylinder, ...) as the first argument.

Use uv run blenderproc run main.py -- --help to see all available options and their descriptions (the -- passes flags through BlenderProc to Tyro).

Mesh	Point cloud	Depth
suzanne (primitive, positional)	--pcd True --light very_bright	--pcd 1024 --point-size 0.01 --depth ray_trace --keep-mesh

Basic Options

• --resolution: Change the resolution of the rendered image (default: 512x512)
• --center: Center the object inside a unit cube (enabled by default)
• --scale: Scale the object to fit into a unit cube (enabled by default)
• --rotate: Rotate the object using XYZ Euler angles in degrees (default: [0,0,-35])
• --show: Show the rendered image in a window (enabled by default if --save is not provided)
• --cam-location: Set the camera location (default: [1.5,0,1])
• --cam-offset: By default, the camera looks at the origin [0,0,0]. Use this option to change the look-at point.

Additional Options

Some examples of additional options to customize the rendering are shown below.

Color

To change the color of the rendered object, use the --color option using either any of the predefined colors (e.g. pale_violet), choosing from those at random (random_color), a completely random color (random), or a three-tuple of RGB values in range 0-1, e.g 0.8 0.5 0.2. Any of the matplotlib colormaps can be used as well. The background color can be changed using the --bg-color option.

Note: Use --seed None (or any changing integer) for non-deterministic results; default is 1337.

Mesh	Point cloud	Background
--color bright_blue	--pcd True --color cool	--bg-color pale_turquoise

Background

By default, the background is transparent. To change this, use the --bg-color option as shown above. Additionally, set --transparent False to render the backdrop object. To use HDRI images as backdrops, use --backdrop path/to/hdri. HDRIs can be obtained e.g. via uv run blenderproc download haven path/to/save/dir.

Backdrop	Colored backdrop	HDRI backdrop
--transparent False	--transparent False --bg-color pale_red	--transparent False --backdrop path/to/hdri

Light

The default light intensity for meshes is bright (0.7) and very_bright (1.0) for point clouds. Use a value between 0 and 1 or very_dark, dark, medium, bright, or very_bright to change the light intensity.

Very Dark	Dark	Medium
--light very_dark	--light dark	--light medium

Shadow

Shadows are rendered by default. To disable them, use the --shadow off option. To make the shadow softer, use --shadow soft or --shadow hard for a harder shadow.

Soft shadow	Hard shadow	No shadow
--shadow soft	--shadow hard	--shadow off

Shading

The default shading is flat for meshes. Use --shade to change mesh shading; point clouds are unaffected by this option.

Flat shading (default)	Smooth shading	Auto-smooth shading
	--shade smooth	--shade auto

Wireframe

To render the object as a wireframe, use the --wireframe option (e.g. --wireframe True or --wireframe red). The wireframe color can be changed using --wireframe color when --keep-mesh is specified.

Wireframe	Mesh + Wireframe	Mesh + Wireframe (Color)
--wireframe True	--wireframe True --keep-mesh	--wireframe red --keep-mesh

Gravity

Objects hover slightly above the ground by default. To change this, use the --gravity option to run quick physics simulation to let the object fall to the ground before rendering.

Default	With gravity
	--gravity

Animations

To create an animation, use the --animate option. Control length with --frames (default: 72) and playback speed with --fps (default: 20). To keep transparency, which is not supported by GIF, use .mp4 as file extension.

Turn (default, loops)	Tumble
--animate turn	--animate tumble

Interactive 3D Visualization

To provide an interactive 3D visualization, use --export path/to/mesh.glb to export the object as a .glb file and use

<script type="module" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/model-viewer/4.1.0/model-viewer.min.js"></script>

<style>
model-viewer {
  width: auto;
  height: 300px;
  display: block;
  margin-left: auto;
  margin-right: auto;
}
</style>

<model-viewer 
  src="path/to/mesh.glb" 
  camera-controls tone-mapping="neutral" 
  shadow-intensity="1" 
  auto-rotate>
</model-viewer>

in any HTML file (like the hosted GitHub Pages site of this repository) to display the object.

Further Options

Some additional useful options include:

• --roughness: Change the roughness of the object. Meshes use 0.5 and point clouds 0.9 by default.
• --ao: Apply ambient occlusion (on for meshes, off for point clouds by default)
• --fstop: Enable depth of field with a given f-stop
• --keep-material: Keep your custom material (only works for .blend files)
• --point-size: Change the size of the points in the point cloud
• --point-shape: Change the shape of the points in the point cloud (sphere, cube, diamond)
• --verbose: Enable verbose logging during execution
• --seed: Set a seed for the random number generator; use None to disable seeding.
• --subsample / --subsample-method {random,fps}: Reduce point counts by a target number or fraction.
• --point-color: Explicit point color when differing from mesh color.
• --bg-light: Adjust background light intensity (default 0.15).
• --look, --engine, --samples, --noise-threshold, --exposure: Advanced render controls.
• --frames, --fps: Animation length and playback speed.

Use uv run blenderproc run main.py to see all available options and their descriptions.

Development

This repository uses uv for dependency management and task running.

# Clone and set up
git clone https://github.com/hummat/bproc-pubvis.git
cd bproc-pubvis
make deps          # runs uv sync --group dev + configures git hooks

After any code change, run the full tooling suite via make check, or individually:

uv run ruff format .   # Format
uv run ruff check .    # Lint
uv run pyright         # Type check
uv run pytest          # Unit tests (set BPROC_INTEGRATION=1 for integration tests)

Re-run make deps only when you intentionally want to refresh dependencies.

Integration tests exercise the BlenderProc CLI end-to-end and are opt-in:

BPROC_INTEGRATION=1 uv run pytest tests/test_integration.py

To regenerate the README gallery assets with your GPU/HDRI set-up, run the gallery suite (writes into examples/ by default). This is opt-in and separate from the basic integration flag:

BPROC_INTEGRATION=1 BPROC_EXAMPLES=1 \
BPROC_HAVEN_DIR=/path/to/haven \
BPROC_EXAMPLES_OUT=examples \
uv run pytest tests/test_integration.py -k readme_gallery

Optional env knobs:

• BPROC_README_RES (default 512) to change render resolution
• BPROC_README_FRAMES (default 72) to change animation length

See AGENTS.md for contributor-focused details (tooling, PR expectations, and how to run integration tests safely).

Debugging

BlenderProc supports visual debugging inside Blender using uv run blenderproc debug instead of uv run blenderproc run. Adding --debug will further disable rendering and only set up the scene.

Credits

• BlenderProc 2

• Blender

• Zheng et al.: Locally Attentional SDF Diffusion for Controllable 3D Shape Generation: Mesh colors and look
• Yang et al.: PointFlow: 3D Point Cloud Generation with Continuous Normalizing Flows: Point cloud color scheme and look