Quick Tip: Render Multiple Views in one shot - BLENDER

andar_b

UPDATE: I did a little more research and I found a better way to do this. Simpler, cleaner, better.

You can begin in a new file and link a scene, or you can follow this tutorial in an existing file. If you want to link a scene, go to File >Link, and navigate to your file and scene.

Now, make a new scene (spacebar>'scene'>select New Scene) and choose "New".

Move to the new scene (click Scene.001 in the Outliner panel)

Add a new camera, and (ctrl+numpad 0) to activate the new camera in your scene. I also turn on Orthographic in the camera settings and a few Composition Guides to help line up the camera angles nicely, but you don't have to. Head over to the Render settings and select the layers you want to render. Finally, go to the Scene options and set "Background" to your main Scene. These settings will now apply to all the views we're going to create.

Now, make another new scene (spacebar>'scene'>New Scene) and choose "Full Copy". Do this as many times as you wish, one copy for each view (plus your original scene.) You might choose to name your scenes now, rather than using "scene.001, scene.002" and so on. (spacebar>Rename Item)

Go to each scene in turn and set up your cameras. Plan out your final composite render, and figure out where you want each view to go. Take a look at my composite attached as well. You'll be adjusting the cameras so that when all the renders are layered over each other, they don't overlap. Composition Guides are your friend.

Finally, switch back to your original scene and open the Node Editor for compositing. You want one "Render Layer" input node for each view, set to the individual scenes you made. You'll need a bunch of AlphaOver nodes, connect the input nodes to the AlphaOver nodes in pairs like this:

Scene.001----
              Alphaover---
Scene.002----/             
Scene.003----              Alphaover-----Composite Output
              Alphaover----/
Scene.004----/

Or if you have an odd number of scenes, connect the odd one with a final AO node like so:

Scene.001----
              Alphaover----
Scene.002----/              Alphaover-----Composite Output
Scene.003------------------/

If everything worked out right, you should have a multi-view render. Of course, it takes as long as all the individual renders combined, but it doesn't require manually switching between views. You can also toggle this whole setup by unchecking "Compositing" under Post Processing in the Render Settings, for quick renders.

If anyone codes addons...I'd definitely use and recommend anything that would make this easier. I don't see why I couldn't throw 5 cameras in one scene and use them each as an input in the compositor. I think a crafty user could link all the cameras to the main scene, and therefore make all the camera adjustments there.