Distributed 3d Rendering addon for Blender

3D rendering has a reputation of being slow, unless you can afford expensive GPUs. For decades, render farm software has been available that allows you to distribute rendering over multiple computers to speed it up.

Usually all you need are a few computers that are connected together using a network (ethernet or even wifi, though we prefer ethernet as its more stable). Though we found it wasn’t always so easy to get these solutions to work.

Here are some of the issues we found when trying to use the existing software

1. Complicated setup, involving more than one software application (license server, job server, etc)
2. Biased towards accelerating animations
3. Only designed to work with computers sharing the same physical network

What is Crowdrender’s 3d Rendering addon then?

We have built a distributed 3d rendering system that works with Blender, which;

1. installs as a single addon, no license server, no job server ☺️
2. is designed to accelerate single frames and animations in Blender’s cycles and eevee render engines
3. Can be used with computers in the cloud and with your friend’s/collaborators computers on other networks using a VPN†

† do checkout out CRESS, which will eventually replace the need for a VPN, making it super easy to share hardware or access it remotely

What makes it different to other rendering software?

We experienced pain trying to finalise our projects to get them ready to render

We wanted a system that could rapidly churn out renders of our key frames and shots.

We also wanted to be able to use both our own computers and those of others. Right now you can use Crowdrender to render on your own hardware, and, you can add computers from popular cloud server providers thanks to our docker images (check out our GitHub page).

Our CRESS project will complete our mission to make easy to use, extensible software for 3d rendering. It will allow you to directly share your rendering power with your friends, just as easily as using drop box.

Some other features

• Supports Blender on Windows 10/11, MacOS and Linux, and yes, you can render your project on any OS type
• Supports a wide range of versions of Blender
• Supports Blender’s compositor natively
• Supports rendering with all of cycles device types, CPU/CUDA/OPTIX/HIP/METAL/Intel’s One API
• Can update the following data in your scene in real time across all your computers;
  • Transform changes on all objects
  • Render settings changes
  • Camera settings changes
• Supports using both your own computers and the cloud thanks to our docker containers and our cloud hosting service.
• Supports stereoscopic/multiview rendering natively in Blender
• Supports all of the render passes of Eevee and Cycles
• Is licensed under the GPL v3.0, so once you download the software, you are free to do with it what you wish.

How can I get this?

Our addon is available both from Blender Market and also via our website, there are single purchase prices and also subscription options.

Single purchase is great if you want to use the program for a one off project and might not use it again for a long time. Purchase just a single version of our addon from Blender Market.

Subscriptions are great if you want to support our project long term, or are rendering often and want constant updates. You can subcribe to support our project at our website.

How do I install and setup?

Luckily we have a video for you to watch right here,  just click the image above and the video will open in a new tab.

What do I do if I need help?

The best thing to do is to email us at [email protected]

https://www.youtube.com/@Crowdrender