A campaign is a public ask: here's what I'm making — help me compute it. You publish a project page with a story and a compute goal, people join it with their idle machines, and you render across everything they've lent. Think of a crowdfunding campaign where the currency is compute — and the backers get to watch the film they helped render.
A campaign is time-boxed and public by design. If what you need is a permanent private pool — your studio, your friends — that's a private group → instead.
Before you start
- An OmnibusCloud account — created during sign-in if you don't have one.
- Something real to make. A campaign lives or dies by its story: an animated short, an archviz series, a motion piece. Contributors choose projects they care about — give them a reason.
- Your render tool — the Blender add-on → or the 3ds Max plugin → is how you'll actually render into the campaign once it's live.
1. Create the campaign
Create → open project starts a four-step wizard. A draft autosaves at every step, so you can leave and come back.
Template. Pick a starting point: Film & animation, Architecture & still imagery, Simulation (bakes, fluids, cloth — long sequential compute that renders as frames), or Your own category, named by you. The template sets defaults for the hero block, the progress metric and the category — all adjustable later.
Promise. What contributors sign up for: the project title, a one-line tagline (it appears under the heading and in the gallery), the project window — from a week up to two years, with no extensions after publishing — and the compute volume: how much you need rendered, in your template's units. On the page it shows as "X / target done". You can also tag what the project is made with (Blender, 3ds Max, …) — an optional chip on your project card.
The title, date window, compute volume and category are fixed at publish time and never change — the wizard says so up front. The description, cover and updates stay editable.
Story. Everything that persuades: a hero video (a YouTube or Vimeo link, embedded at the top of your page), a cover image (shown on the page and on gallery cards), and a formatted description — headings, lists, links. Unlike the Promise, the story stays editable for the whole life of the campaign — polish it whenever you like.
Review & publish. The locked fields, summarized for one last look; confirm you understand the lock and that your project follows the content guidelines — and publish.
2. A short review, then you're live
First-time publications go through a quick human review before appearing in the gallery — it keeps the gallery worth browsing. While pending, the page is visible only to you, with the submission time and expected review window right on it; you can withdraw back to draft at any moment. Once approved, the campaign goes live in the gallery → at its public URL — and edits to your story afterwards don't require re-review.
3. Rally your contributors
Share the campaign URL everywhere your audience lives — the Share button on your page is right next to the countdown. Visitors see your story, the contributors already aboard, live progress toward the goal, the days remaining — and a button to join in with their machines.
As the author you see the same page with your own controls in place of it: Manage campaign, Machines, Share.
Joining takes one step: the page asks which machines should help, with each machine's specs and live online status right on its card. Checked machines take the campaign's tasks when they're free — and the choice can be changed at any time. From then on, the button on your page reads You're helping.
4. Render into the campaign
With machines aboard, open your scene and render: in the Blender add-on or the 3ds Max plugin, your campaign appears in Target — select it, press Render, and the work spreads across every machine your contributors have lent. The campaign page's progress moves with every finished frame.
5. Keep the community close
Contributors gave you their machines; give them the journey back. Post updates — milestones, work-in-progress stills, breakthroughs and setbacks. They land on your public page in a day-numbered feed, and the Post update button sits right in that feed, so the most frequent author action is one click away. Campaigns that post updates keep their machines; silent ones lose them.
6. Finish what you started
My campaigns is your command deck: every campaign you've run, active ones with Update / Manage / Mark completed / Cancel campaign at hand, finished ones with their Result a click away.
When the work is done, Mark completed — the page flips to its finished state with the result front and center, and stays up as a portfolio artifact: proof of what a community computed together. If life intervenes, Cancel campaign ends it early and honestly — the page archives with its progress frozen where it stood.
What's next
- Prefer a permanent private pool over a public campaign? → Getting Started with Private Groups →
- Rendering from Blender? → Getting Started with the Blender Add-on → · From Max? → 3ds Max Plugin →
- Want to lend your own machines to someone else's campaign? → Getting Started with the OmnibusCloud Client →
Questions? Ask in r/OmnibusCloud → — we read everything.
Let's build the ultracomputer together!