BOINC Blender application for BOINC Central

An application to run Blender rendering tasks on BOINC Central.

Command Line Usage

./boincblender \
  -blender /bin/blender \
  -workdir /app \
  -input scene.blend \
  -output renders/frame_#### \
  -frame 1 \
  -engine CYCLES \
  -cyclesDevice CPU \
  -imageFormat PNG \
  -threads 4

Key flags:

• -blender Path to Blender executable (default /bin/blender inside the container)
• -workdir Working directory (where input/output live)
• -input (required) .blend file name relative to workdir
• -output Output prefix (Blender will add frame numbering)
• -frame Frame number to render
• -engine CYCLES or EEVEE
• -cyclesDevice Device when using Cycles: CPU|CUDA|OPTIX|HIP|ONEAPI|METAL
• -imageFormat One of TGA, RAWTGA, JPEG, IRIS, AVIRAW, AVIJPEG, PNG, BMP, HDR, TIFF
• -threads Thread count passed to Blender -t

A fraction_done file (0.000–1.000) is updated as progress lines are parsed and written from Blender output.

Building Locally

Requires Go 1.22+.

go build ./boincblender.go

Docker / Container Usage

The provided Dockerfile downloads Blender and sets up a minimal runtime.

Build the image:

docker build -t boinc-blender:latest .

Run (expecting an input.zip containing the .blend and any assets):

docker run --rm -v "$PWD":/app -e ARGS="-input scene.blend -output frame_#### -frame 1 -engine CYCLES -threads 4" boinc-blender:latest

The next parameters are mandatory:

• -input (required) .blend file name relative to /app
• -output Output prefix (Blender will add frame numbering)
• -frame Frame number to render