There is a way, saabfan!
Simply left-click the little triangle next to the "ground", just like you would when selecting the bricks. In the 3-D view, the ground will be selected. Then, delete. Now, if you render, it will only render the model. It makes the rendering process go so much faster! I used this function to render some of my latest Neo-Classic space MOC's.

Thanks a lot Ru Montag! 😃
I'll definitely try it.

Please download last version of the template (1.03). I updated the colour value of Light Nougat to something more accurate to real parts.

Hey! Thanks for your incredible script. Real quick, can you break down what exactly the script is doing upon import? Didn't see it described above or in your video. Is it affecting the mesh at all (setting all shading to smooth, for example) or is it just applying some material node setups to existing materials imported through the workshop? We're looking to build some custom versions of the materials since we primarily use GPU and your material node requirements in the Experimental feature set for GPU severely increase the render time. But if your script is doing more than just replacing materials, we're curious to see what exactly it's doing so we might be able to apply the changes ourselves before linking to our new material set.

Thanks so much for all you do, Mecabricks is incredible! And your Blender workflow is a huge nod to the open source community. 😃

Thanks for you message!

If you want to know exactly what it does or how it works, have a look at the comments in the file replace.py. It is pretty straight forward though. In short, it replaces and set the materials up (colours, decorations and scale) and applies a smooth shading.

It is currently not GPU friendly because of the round edges shader that is coded in OSL. Unfortunately, this shader makes a real difference to the final result and therefore it is hard not to use it 😉 If you un-tick the Open Shading Language checkbox, it shall switch back to GPU - from memory, the rest of it is GPU friendly (SSS works on GPU now).

Looking forward to see you result!

It seems that the template link is not working correctly. Is it just me?

Nevermind, it's working. When I render my model everything is pink though, even when I ran the script.

Hello,

Oups, you are right, There is something wrong with the link to download the last version. I'll correct that tonight.
If your render is pink it is because you did not open a HDR image to light the scene. In addition to the video tutorial you can have a look at this post.

OK, I got it. Thanks

For some reason, when I use a model that someone else made in Mecabricks, I can render it and it looks great. But when I try to render something that I made, and I click "Run Script", I get an error saying "Python script fail, look in the console for now...". What does this mean?

My script only work with models exported from mecabricks. It doesn't work with your own objects that you designed in Blender.

Let me know if I did not answer properly to your question 😉

I actually meant something that I made in Mecabricks. But it might just be a coincidence, because right now I am rendering someone else's model where I just changed the colors.

I'm not too sure then. There is no difference between your model or someone else model. Did you tried again with one of yours?
Did you make sure that it was exported in Collada? It might be a part that is the issue. Let me know if you find out more about it.

I tried again with my piano one and it still didn't work. I exported it as Collada and did "Group by geometry". But just now I made a simple minifigure on Mecabricks and I didn't get the error. Is it possible I did something wrong when I was building the model?

I'll try to export it and see where the error is coming from.

I just tried to export and render your piano and I didn't get any errors...
Can you tell me which version of Blender / template you use and on which operating system?

I'm on Blender 2.75 and Windows 7 Professional, using the Mecabricks to Blender Template, if that's what you mean. But I don't think you need to worry about it. I built a couch and imported the piano and exported that as a Collada, and I'm able to render that. I don't know. Maybe I did one of the steps wrong, though I've tried it quite a few times.

Not too sure. It will remain a mystery 😛

For some odd reason, I am not getting transparent textures on my bricks after rendering and using the script. Am i forgetting something? I used the exr file, and everything looks right including the version of Blender.

Transparent textures are not handled automatically by my template. You'll need to do a bit of work to make them appear properly. I made a little tutorial with a possible solution: http://www.mecabricks.com/en/forum/topic/78