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Render Queue add-on

Queue scenes and render them to video using Godot's Movie Maker mode, without babysitting each run. It adds a Render Queue tab to the editor's bottom panel.

Why it exists

Godot's Movie Maker mode renders high-quality non-real-time video with perfect frame pacing, but it is a one scene → one file per run tool with no queue and no persistence. This add-on wraps it: build a list of shots, set them up once, and render them sequentially in the background.

How it works

Each time you press Render queue, the dock launches a separate Godot process with Movie Maker flags:

godot --path <project> --resolution 1920x1080 --fixed-fps 30 \
      --write-movie <output> [--quit-after N] <scene>

Movie Maker mode cannot be toggled while a project is already running, so a fresh process per job is the correct approach (this is also what the official docs recommend). The dock polls each process, then advances to the next job.

Usage

  1. Enable Render Queue from Project > Project Settings > Plugins.
  2. Open the scene you want to render and press Add current scene.
  3. Adjust the job's output path, resolution, FPS, and format in the details panel on the right. Edits are saved automatically.
  4. Set the Godot exe path if it was not auto-detected (it defaults to the running editor's own executable).
  5. Press Render queue to render every enabled job in order.

Output formats

Format Codec Notes
OGV Theora + Vorbis Best quality/size balance. Editor builds only.
AVI MJPEG Fast encoding, capped near 4 GB.
PNG Lossless sequence + WAV Supports transparency; post-process with FFmpeg.

Stopping a render

  • Set Quit after (frames) on a job to stop it after N frames, or
  • enable Movie Quit On Finish on the scene's AnimationPlayer (for a non-looping animation), or
  • have the scene call get_tree().quit() when it is finished.

Files

File Purpose
plugin.cfg Plugin manifest.
plugin.gd Registers the dock with the editor.
render_dock.gd The dock UI and the sequential process runner.
render_queue.gd Job list model and JSON persistence.
render_job.gd A typed helper describing one job and its CLI args.
render_queue.json The saved queue (created on first use).

Notes and limitations

  • Rendering blocks the queue, not the editor: the editor stays responsive while jobs run in separate processes.
  • Because each job is a separate process, jobs render one at a time. Parallel rendering could be added later but would compete for GPU resources.
  • render_job.gd is provided as a typed reference for the CLI construction; the dock currently builds args inline from the dictionary job model.