BoltRenders documentation
How to prepare a Blender project, submit it, read what the farm reports back, and collect your frames. If you are looking for rendering technique rather than platform mechanics, that lives in articles.
The workflow at a glance
Prepare in Blender
Pack assets, bake simulations, and make sure everything the render needs travels with the file.
Submit the project
Upload from the add-on or the web uploader. The evaluation is free and commits you to nothing.
Review and start
Check the test frames, read the fixed price and the render time, then choose how fast you want it.
Track and collect
Follow the job through its statuses and download the finished frames within seven days.
Guides
- Prepare a Blender project
- Make assets local, pack resources, and bake fluid, cloth, rigid-body and particle simulations before you upload.
- Render with third-party add-ons
- Which add-ons have to travel with your project, what happens on the farm when one is missing, and the three ways to handle it.
- Render File Output nodes
- Configure Blender's File Output nodes and render passes so every layer comes back from the farm in the folder structure you expect.
- Set up a new render
- Upload a project, wait out the automatic evaluation, read your quote and test frames, choose a tier, and start the render.
- Use your dashboard
- A tour of every part of the dashboard: the rail, your balance, following and managing projects, payments, signed-in devices, your account and the status strip.
- Understand project statuses
- What every status on your dashboard means, from Starting Evaluation through to Completed, Expired and Failed, and what to do about each.
- Download your rendered files
- What happens when a render finishes, how to browse your frames, and how to take a single file, one output folder or the whole render before it expires.
LaunchControl
LaunchControl is our free Blender add-on. It runs the whole preparation checklist for you and submits jobs to the farm without leaving the viewport. See the add-on page for downloads and release notes.
- Install LaunchControl
- Download and install the add-on, find it in the N-panel, connect your BoltRenders account, and set its preferences.
- Use the Preparation Suite
- Check integrity, bake every simulation, consolidate scattered assets, collect add-ons, and the order to run them in.
- Export and submit from Blender
- Build a portable packed zip, or send a job straight to the farm and watch the evaluation from inside Blender.