Render Farm

Overview

Render Farm adds a Render Farm panel to Blender’s Render properties. It can split animation rendering across multiple local Blender background processes, submit jobs to connected render clients through a bundled server/client system, and combine rendered image sequences into video with ffmpeg.

Major Features

• Local parallel rendering: launches multiple Blender background instances on the current machine.
• Remote rendering: submits render jobs to a Render Farm Server with connected clients.
• Render preparation: checks frame output mode, existing frame files, and transfer dependencies before launch.
• Dependency transfer: packages the blend file and referenced files for remote client rendering.
• Client status: checks connected clients, versions, availability, and environment compatibility.
• Remote extension update: can request client extension updates when client setup does not match.
• Frame controls: begin, continue, cancel, and monitor frame rendering.
• Video combine: combines rendered frames into MP4, MOV, MKV, or WebM using ffmpeg.
• Server/client setup: bundled server and client scripts include config files and optional Windows tray launchers.

Basic Frame Rendering Usage

1. Save the Blender file.
2. Open Render Properties > Render Farm.
3. Choose Render On: this computer, this computer plus other computers, or other computers only.
4. Set the number of local instances or instances per machine.
5. Click Check/Prepare Render.
6. Click Begin Render or Continue Render when preparation succeeds.

Remote Farm Setup

• Server config includes host, port, stale client timeout, staging directory, auto client updates, and client update path.
• Client config includes server host/port, Blender path, Python path, max instances, machine name, keepalive interval, staging directory, update permission, and restart behavior.
• Windows helper actions can launch server/client tray processes, install tray dependencies, install startup launchers, remove startup launchers, and open setup folders.

Video Combining

The Video Rendering section can combine an image sequence into a video. Options include a custom frame folder, custom framerate, optional external audio file, container, codec, quality, and output video path. ffmpeg must be available on PATH.

Permissions

Files

Required to inspect, package, stage, render, and combine render files.

Network

Required to submit render jobs to the Render Farm Server and communicate with clients.