real-time collaboration for blender 4.5+

Blender,but together.

Two artists, one scene, live. Blend Buddies streams transforms, mesh edits, materials, and animation between Blender users in real time.

Download Betawatch a session ↓
runs on blender 4.5+licence gpl-3.0transport wss / tls 1.3
room · movie-rev2ver 184live
mike
jane
jane · sphere's better big. ship it
snapshot loaded · 2 clients · waiting for input…transform_stream cube.001 · Δloc.x · 30 msg/slock_object sphere.002 → jane · scale 1.5×delta_update mat.cube · base_color · persisted ✓

scroll to drive the session

meshes✦curves✦surfaces✦fonts✦armatures✦metaballs✦point clouds✦hair curves✦image empties✦materials✦node graphs✦textures✦keyframes✦fcurves✦actions✦constraints✦drivers✦collections✦timeline markers✦meshes✦curves✦surfaces✦fonts✦armatures✦metaballs✦point clouds✦hair curves✦image empties✦materials✦node graphs✦textures✦keyframes✦fcurves✦actions✦constraints✦drivers✦collections✦timeline markers✦

§01 · capabilities

Everything you'd expect to sync, actually does.

A complete pipeline built for Blender's depsgraph. Not a one-size-fits-all generic plugin.

/01geometry

Live mesh sync

Edit vertices, edges, faces in edit mode. Every geometry change rebuilds on every connected client.

/0230 Hz

Transform streaming

Grab, rotate, scale — watched live at sub-frame rate. Echo suppression keeps both ends from fighting.

/03shading

Materials & nodes

Full shader graph serialization. Shaders, textures, procedural setups arrive intact on the other end.

/04safety

Object locking

While someone is editing an object, no one else can touch it. Built-in handoff makes sharing explicit.

/05presence

Presence cues

Persistent per-user colors and selection overlays. See who's looking at what, in 3D, at a glance.

/06versioned

Backups & recovery

Auto-snapshots on every join, plus manual saves on demand. Roll any room back to any version.

§02 · workflow

From install to collaborating, in three.

01 · Install

Drop the zip into Blender.

Preferences → Get Extensions → Install from Disk. The setup wizard handles username on first launch.

02 · Room

Create or join a room.

Pick a room name and a password, then share them with your collaborators. Saved credentials make rejoining one click.

03 · Work

Just use Blender.

Auto-sync is on by default. Move objects, edit meshes, tweak shaders. Everyone sees everything, live.

§03 · specifications

Under the hood.

blender_manifest.toml
# Blend Buddies Beta — extension manifest
id = "blend_buddies_beta"
name = "Blend Buddies Beta"
version = "1.0.12"
type = "add-on"
licence = ["SPDX:GPL-3.0-or-later"]
blender_version_min = "4.5.0"
# Wire format
protocol = 1
transport = "wss://"
serialization = "msgpack"

Built for Blender's architecture.

A dedicated change detector hooks into the depsgraph, debounces and batches events, then pushes deltas onto a WebSocket queue — all without ever blocking the main thread.

requires
Blender 4.5.0+
platforms
macOS · Windows · Linux
network
outbound WSS / port 8765
storage
AES-GCM + SQLite (server)
updates
in-place via extensions API

§04 · trust & safety

Your scenes, your rules.

TLS 1.3 in flight

Every packet on the wire travels over TLS. No plaintext scene data leaves your machine.

AES-GCM at rest

Server-side scene data is encrypted at the field level before it touches SQLite.

Per-session HMAC

Each session has its own message-authentication key. Replays and tampered frames are dropped.

One-click wipe

Delete every credential, salt, and acceptance record stored locally with one button.

public beta · pre-release

Stop emailing
.blend files.

Install the Blend Buddies Beta alongside your stable build, report bugs straight from the panel, and help shape the release. Expect rough edges.

Download Betacoming soon to Superhive

GPL-3.0 · support@blendbuddies.dev