The simplest way of hosting a server is probably to use a VPN solution like https://www.zerotier.com/ (open source, with a free tier).
When running a server under Windows 10, pay attention to the Windows firewall popup and take care to enable communication with the python.exe
provided with Blender.
Follow the Zerotier documentation to setup a network
- start Zerotier and connect to your Zerotier network
- start Blender, open the Mixer tray, leave
host
aslocalhost
, leaveport
to the default value (12800), inAdvanced Options
checkShow server console
and clickConnect
. This starts the server with a console.
- start Zerotier and connect to your Zerotier network.
- start Blender, open the Mixer tray, leave
port
to the default value (12800), type inhost
the Zerotier address of the machine that hosts the server, then clickConnect
.
Alternatively, you can configure NAT rules on your router for port forwarding. Default port of Mixer is 12800, so a basic rule would be to forward 12800 on your router to 12800 on the computer hosting the server.
Once this is done find your router public IP address with http://whatismyip.host/ and share it with other participants. They can connect to your server by replacing localhost
with this IP in the panel.
You also need to ensure you have no firewall blocking incoming connections.