BlenderDMX Addon

An addon for Blender to design and render DMX lighting

Entertainment and architectural DMX lighting visualization and rendering tool designed to offer a free and easy solution for Lighting Designers.

Device definition is based on GDTF Specification, utilizing the Fixture library on GDTF Share.

BlenderDMX Addon is built on strong foundation of Blender, which runs equally well on Linux, Windows, and Macintosh computers. Its interface uses OpenGL to provide a consistent experience.

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Motivation

As lighting designers, we have always wanted a free DMX visualizer capable of ray tracing, with capabilities for real-time programming of dynamics, as well as the ability to produce photorealistic output.

BlenderDMX Addon offers both possibilities: Eevee real time renderer offers the dynamics, while Cycles offers stunning photorealistic results.

The combination of tools like Blender, Python, and GDTF provides a transparent and accessible platform, allowing designers to deeply comprehend how each component works and make improvements or modifications as required.

Advanced Networking

External DMX signal from sACN or Art-Net can be used for controlling, and it can be recorded as keyframes into Blender or the signal can be used for a special #bdmx driver in Blender to control other Blender objects/properties.
OpenSoundControl can send fixture selection to external DMX consoles.
PosiStageNet can receive position information from different trackers connected to a PSN server, it's followers can be moving lights or any other Blender objects.
GDTF Share and format integration provides source of fixture data.
MVR-xchange protocol offers seamless MVR workflow.

Open Source

The source code is completely open source under the GPLv3 license and openly available on GitHub. Feel free to inspect, share, and contribute!

By leveraging open-source technologies, designers can fully learn and understand every detail of the system, empowering them to make informed decisions and tailor the solution to their specific needs.

BlenderDMX Addon is using General Device Type Format (GDTF) and My Virtual Rig (MVR) - open-source file formats that let you share anything with anyone.

The Project

BlenderDMX Addon allows using lighting fixture's definitions from GDTF and also loading of complete scenes from MVR. Fixture's manipulation can be done internally in Blender or externally via DMX like ArtNet or sACN. External DMX or internal Programmer state can be recorded into Blender's timeline via Keyframes recording. BlenderDMX Addon also offers dedicated DMX driver for Blender to control any Blender property via external DMX signal.

Beautiful Renders

Blender can achieve very eye pleasing photorealistic renders thanks to it's raytracing rendering method called Cycles. The Cycles renderer as well as the OpenImageDenoise can run on GPU on supported hardware. Image by 21 Production. See more examples in the Gallery.

How to Get Started

Our Getting Started Guide walks you through the steps of downloading BlenderDMX Addon.

Detailed usage documentation is available in the User Guide. Also head over to our Documentation & FAQ page for more information.

Recent Blog Posts

BlenderDMX Addon 1.9.3 Released

By vanous
Posted on 7 February 2025, 15:21 in Releases

Initial support for a control passing down the geometry tree Allow control of beams from attributes on parenting geometries MVR-xchange: Handle not existing commits Show info about downloaded commits Use UUID in uppercase Ensure FileName is not empty Make StationName definition global Update pygdtf with better system to get geometry parent Adjust formatting of fixture.

BlenderDMX Addon 1.9.2 Released

By vanous
Posted on 1 February 2025, 19:19 in Releases

Improvements to MVR-xchange local version MVR-xchange overall improvements to the TCP communication use per blend file application/station UUID add configuration for mDNS group compatibility handle UUIDs with changed character casing reformat all code and add uv based python helpers update pygdtf and pymvr Changelog See the changelong for more information, or developers can look at git log for full details.