multi-user/README.md

Multi-user blender addon

Enable real-time collaborative workflow inside blender

⚠️ Under development, use it at your own risks. Currently tested on Windows platform. ⚠️

This tool aims to allow multiple users to work on the same scene over the network. Based on a Clients / Server architecture, the data-oriented replication schema replicate blender datablocks across the wire.

Installation

1. Download lastest release here.
2. Install last_version.zip from your addon preferences

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Usage

Settings are under: View3D -> Sidebar -> Multiuser

Before starting

1. Set user infos

• name: username.
• color: color used to represent the user into other user workspaces.

2. setup network

⚠️ If you host a session over internet, special network configuration is needed ⚠️

Host	Join
asd
Start empty: Cleanup the file before hosting	IP: host ip
	Port: host port

2.1 Advanced pannel

Right strategy (only host) enable you to choose between a strict and a relaxed pattern:

• Strict: Host is the king, by default the host own each properties, only him can grant modification rights.
• Common: Each properties are under common rights by default, on selection, a property is only modifiable by the owner.

On each strategy, when a user is the owner he can choose to pass his rights to somemone else.

Propertie frequency gird allow to set a custom replication frequency for each type of datablock

In-session

Connected users pannel

This pannel displays all connected users, including you. The camera button allow you to focus your 3D viewport on a user.

Properties outliner pannel

Current development statut

Actually, not all datablock are supported for replication over the wire. The following list summarizes the status for each ones.

Name	Statut	Comment
action	❌	WIP
armature	❌	WIP
camera	✅
collection	✅
curve	✅	Not tested
gpencil	✅
image	✅	Local only
mesh	✅
material	✅
metaball	❌
object	✅
scene	✅
world	✅

Performance issues

Since this addon is writen in pure python for a prototyping purpose, perfomance could be better from all perspective. Soon I will start to port the multi-user addon concept to a blender branch.

Dependencies

Dependencies	Version	Needed
ZeroMQ	latest	yes
msgpack	latest	yes
PyYAML	latest	yes

Contributing

1. Fork it (https://gitlab.com/yourname/yourproject/fork)
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/fooBar)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some fooBar')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/fooBar)
5. Create a new Pull Request