Render animation with different angles

Question

I have an animated object in the origin of my scene. I want to render the animation from different angles rotating the camera 45 degrees along the path, while keeping the camera pointed at the subject of the scene. I made a circle curve and parented the camera to it, but when I start the animation the camera follows the path.

What I want to do is, have the camera stay in the same location until the rendering of the whole animation finishes, then move 45 degrees and start rendering the whole animation again from the new position, then add another 45 and start rendering the animation again and so on, as shown below the red dots are the location where the camera will stop to begin rendering the animation from this point and once it finishes, it will move to the next stop and so on until it comes back to the first initial location and stops.

Answer 1

This script will render your scene from the number of angles you specify in the variable numAngles, assuming you have your camera set in the zero position, and the camera is parented to an empty. You can review the setup in the attached blendfile.

The script replaces a traditional animation render, it will by itself render each frame and set the frame number each time. It iterates over the entire span of the animation (specified in the variable animLen) as many times as the number of angles specified in numAngles.

import bpy
from math import radians
from os.path import join

S = bpy.context.scene

renderFolder = "C:/MyRenderFolder/"

camParent = bpy.data.objects['Empty']

animLen   = 40 # frames
numAngles = 8
rotAngle  = 360 / numAngles

for i in range(numAngles):
    # Set camera angle via parent
    angle = i * rotAngle
    camParent.rotation_euler.z = radians( angle )

    # Render animation
    for f in range(1,animLen + 1):
        S.frame_set( f ) # Set frame

        frmNum   = str( f ).zfill(3) # Formats 5 --> 005
        fileName = "angle_{a}_frm_{f}".format( a = angle, f = frmNum )
        fileName += S.render.file_extension
        bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = join( renderFolder, fileName )

        bpy.ops.render.render(write_still = True)

Answer 2

I've fixed TLousky's script a bit to be able to render specific range of animation. Maybe someone will find that useful:

import bpy
from math import radians
from os.path import join

S = bpy.context.scene

renderFolder = "C:/MyRenderFolder/"

camParent = bpy.data.objects['Empty']

startFrame = 60 # replace with your start frame
endFrame  = 76 # replace with your end frame
numAngles = 8
rotAngle  = 360 / numAngles

for i in range(numAngles):
    # Set camera angle via parent
    angle = i * rotAngle
    camParent.rotation_euler.z = radians( angle )

    # Render animation
    for f in range(startFrame,endFrame + 1):
        S.frame_set( f ) # Set frame

        frmNum   = str( f-startFrame ).zfill(3) # Formats 5 --> 005
        fileName = "angle_{a}_frm_{f}".format( a = angle, f = frmNum)
        fileName += S.render.file_extension
        bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = join( renderFolder, fileName )

        bpy.ops.render.render(write_still = True)