bpy.ops.render.render does not find camera

Question

I'm trying to run the following smallscript. The preview with 12 does render, but the last line of the script fails with this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
  File "D:\Programme\Blender\2.78\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 189, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Error: Cannot render, no camera

But there is a camera

import bpy

def reset_scene():
    for item in bpy.data.objects:
        item.select = True

    bpy.ops.object.delete()

    for material in bpy.data.materials:
        if not material.users:
            bpy.data.materials.remove(material)

    for texture in bpy.data.textures:
        if not texture.users:
            bpy.data.textures.remove(texture)

reset_scene()


bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(0,1,0))

bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(0,-0.05,0))

bpy.context.object.scale[1] = 0.1
bpy.context.object.scale[0] = 10
bpy.context.object.scale[2] = 10

bpy.ops.object.camera_add(location=(0, 4, 4), rotation=(-0.7853, 0, 0))
bpy.ops.object.lamp_add(type='SUN', location=(0, 5, 0))

bpy.data.scenes["Scene"].render.filepath = 'c:\test.jpg'
bpy.ops.render.render( write_still=True )

When I set the camera explicitly with this script:

bpy.context.scene.camera = bpy.data.objects['Camera']

it seems to work.

Why can't it find the camera automatically like when you press F12?

Answer 1

Simply set the scene.camera after you add the camera.

from bpy import context
scene = context.scene

...

bpy.ops.object.camera_add(location=(0, 4, 4), 
                          rotation=(-0.7853, 0, 0))
scene.camera = context.object
...

Hitting F12 invokes the operator, which when scene.camera is None , throws a message if no cam, or uses a camera from the scene and sets it to scene.camera. Test by adding a few cameras, setting scene.camera to None, and pressing F12.

To invoke the operator from code,

bpy.ops.render.render('INVOKE_DEFAULT', write_still=True)

Note: bpy.data contains all the objects in the blend file. context.scene.objects contains all the objects in the context scene. The context scene may not necessarily be bpy.data.scenes["Scene"]. render.render renders the context scene, unless another scene is specified.

A tip, set up a context variable, either context = bpy.context or from bpy import context at the beginning of your test code, then later cut and paste into, for instance, operator execute(self, context) methods. Setting vars like scene = context.scene, obj = context.object, obj.scale = (0.1, 1, 10) makes code far more readable IMO rather than always addressing from bpy.