A private group is an invite-only pool of machines: you and the people you choose, pooling hardware for a common cause. No public page, no gallery listing, no story to tell — just a link you share and the machines behind it.
Where a campaign → is a public, time-boxed ask to the community, a private group is a permanent co-op: it has no deadline and no audience beyond its members. A studio pooling workstations for overnight renders, friends lending each other their gaming PCs, a class sharing a lab's machines — that's what groups are for.
1. Create the group
Groups live on the My groups page — every group you run or belong to, in one list. Hit Create group, and creation is one short form: a name and an optional description of what the group is for, visible only to members. No cover image, no dates, no story — a group has none of those by definition. Inviting people and managing machines come after it's created.
Click Create and you land straight in the group's admin console, invite link ready. Creating the group makes you its admin — you carry the Owner badge, and the group's three levers are yours alone: granting and revoking the right to run work, removing members, and deleting the group itself.
2. Invite people
The invite link is the whole membership mechanism: anyone who opens it becomes a member. No application forms, no approval queue — access control is simply controlling who you send the link to. Copy it and share it with your team.
If a link escapes further than you intended, Regenerate issues a new one and the old link stops working — existing members stay, new joins need the fresh link.
3. Members connect their machines
Each member opens the link, signs in (creating an account on the way if needed), and chooses which of their machines take part: the Which machines should help? picker shows each machine with its specs and live online status — tick the ones you're lending, and change the lineup any time.
Machines run the OmnibusCloud client →; every member controls their own on their own terms — idle-only, on their schedule, paused whenever they need their machine back. Membership survives a machine being offline: it simply picks up work again when it returns.
For members, the group's page is their control surface too: the same members list, a Machines card to manage which of their machines contribute — and, should they want out, Leave group in the danger zone. Leaving is always in the member's hands.
4. Decide who can run work
Contributing machines and submitting work are separate permissions. Every member lends machines; launching compute jobs on the group's machines is a per-member Run toggle in the admin console — and only the admin can change it. You have full rights by definition; for everyone else, you decide: maybe everyone renders, maybe only you do and the rest contribute hardware. Flip it on or off at any moment — no re-invites, no role juggling.
5. Render into the group
Members with the run permission submit work straight from their tools: in the Blender add-on → or the 3ds Max plugin →, the group appears in Target — select it and render. Frames are distributed across the group's machines, whoever's online and idle.
Every group you run or belong to sits on your My groups page — a permanent membership, not a countdown.
6. Managing the group
The admin console is the group's single control surface: rename the group inline, manage Run permissions, and remove a member from their ⋯ menu — their machines leave with them. A Machines card lets you manage which of your own machines contribute to this group, right from the console. At the very bottom lives the danger zone: Delete group removes the group and its membership for everyone, irreversibly — which is why it's the one red button in the room.
What's next
- Need the wider community's help, not just your circle? → Getting Started with Campaigns →
- Setting up the machines themselves? → Getting Started with the OmnibusCloud Client →
- Rendering from Blender or 3ds Max? → Blender Add-on → · 3ds Max Plugin →
Questions? Ask in r/OmnibusCloud → — we read everything.
Let's build the ultracomputer together!