RenderNet

A self-hosted Blender render farm for a shared workstation. One machine does the rendering; everyone else submits .blend files from a browser with nothing to install and collects the finished frames as a ZIP or a video. It spreads a job across as many machines as you point at it, bakes whatever simulations the scene needs before rendering it, holds a test frame back for approval if you ask, and picks up where it left off when the workstation is switched off mid-render.

flowchart LR
    B[Browser] -->|"upload .blend"| A[Express API]
    A --> Q[Job queue]
    Q --> W[RenderWorker]
    W -->|spawn| BL[Blender CLI]
    BL -->|"frame_0001.png"| W
    W -->|"POST /api/worker<br/>frame + progress"| A
    A --> DB[(SQLite)]
    A -->|"ZIP download"| B

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Setting it up

On the machine that renders, which needs Node.js 22 or newer and Blender:

git clone https://github.com/Vishrut2403/RenderNet.git
cd RenderNet && ./start.sh

That is the whole of it. The script installs what is missing, builds the page the browser gets, starts the farm, and prints the address to open and the code for creating an account. Run it again whenever you want the farm up; Ctrl+C stops it.

Everybody else opens that address, creates an account with that code, and uploads a scene. A browser is the whole client.

To make another machine render as well, clone this there and point it at the farm. It needs Blender too, and an admin to issue it a credential when it asks:

./join.sh http://rendernet.local:5500

Several server processes would need Redis to hear each other; one does not, so it is optional and off. To run it anyway, docker compose up -d and start the farm with REDIS_URL=redis://127.0.0.1:6379 ./start.sh.