How to use Blender 3D Software in the Cloud?

A professional 3D computer graphics application such as Blender, which offers tools for visualization, drafting, rendering, and design, needs powerful computing resources for fast 3D graphic modeling, rigging, sculpting, and other tasks. These applications have high computing demands and can only be run on high-end desktops and laptops that are prohibitively expensive. Even then, it is difficult to perform rendering jobs efficiently and scale the performance on these devices.

In this article, we will explore cloud hosting as an option and explain how to host Blender on virtual machines.

What Are the Advantages of Hosting Blender on Virtual Machines?

Blender cloud hosting can solve many problems associated with running the application on physical desktop computers.

• It is possible to create large render farms to scale the solution at relatively lower costs.
• It provides remote access to powerful resources for running computing-resource intensive Blender workloads.
• Many processes can be automated, and large teams are not required for managing several machines simultaneously.
• Organizations can take advantage of distributed rendering for Blender by splitting frames into tiles on Ubuntu or Windows Server GPU machine nodes.
• It is possible to store large volumes of Blender render output in the cloud.
• Improve real-time performance of the Blender software for applications such as high poly character animation and scenes in which there can be high memory usage, and there can be noticeable lags at high memory usage on laptops and desktops.

How to Run Blender on Regular Computer Using Virtual Machine?

Any internet-enabled device can be turned into a low-latency high-end workstation for animation, visual effects, simulations, and rendering with GPU acceleration for running Blender in a Windows environment using a virtual desktop. Here is how you can use GPU-enabled virtual desktops for running Blender for modeling, animation, and rendering.

• Ensure that you have a local machine that supports the required screen-resolution, computing-resources, and network bandwidth for running Blender.
• You will require a stable internet connection. The bigger the screen size, the greater the bandwidth that would be required.
• Sign up for a GPU-enabled Virtual Desktop with your preferred hardware and software stack.
• Install the GPU driver and the Blender application on the cloud desktop.
• Try using publicly available Blender Demo files for confirming that the solution works.

How to Automate Blender Scene Rendering With Azure Resources?

You can render multiple frames of Blender scenes at substantially lower costs using the pay-per-use licensing of Azure resources. Here are the steps to use Blender with Azure Virtual Machine and other resources.

• Create an empty file group in the Azure Batch Explored to upload Blender scene files.
• Similarly, add another Azure Blog storage container for the output files.
• Create a batch pool of Azure Virtual Machines for Blender cloud rendering. This can be simplified by using Apps4Rent Blender 3D On Windows Server 2019 Azure Marketplace VM image.
• Once the Azure Virtual Machines have been allocated and have started running, you can perform a rendering job with specific tasks for each frame. At this stage, the scene files are copied from the storage file group to Azure VMs with Blender.
• Depending on the Azure Virtual Machine size, the rendered frames and the log files will first be written to the virtual machine, following which they will be replicated in Azure Storage based on the specifications of the log template.
• The pools can be subsequently deleted to prevent charges from further accruing to the Azure subscription.

Apps4Rent Can Help Deploy Blender on Cloud Virtual Machine

Using Blender on virtual machines can not only free-up physical hardware space but also provide a cost-efficient solution for high-performance rendering. The primary challenge, however, is to right-size the virtual machines for using Blender, as not all GPUs are built for the process. Additionally, using a public cloud service such as Azure can add even greater flexibility and scalability of resources for Blender applications.

As a Tier 1 Microsoft CSP, Apps4Rent provides managed Azure services for virtualizing Blender on the cloud. We can also offer Blender cloud solutions through our servers in top-tier SSAE 16 certified data centers in New York and New Jersey at competitive prices. Contact our cloud desktop consultants, available 24/7 via phone, chat, and email for assistance.