Meerkat

Real-time collaborative editing inside Blender — multiplayer scene editing, live transforms, and shared sessions.

Alpha dropping soon — join the discussion

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Why Meerkat?

Blender has no built-in real-time collaboration. If you're working with a team, you're juggling .blend file versions over chat or cloud sync — hoping nobody overwrites each other's work.

Meerkat fixes that.

Feature	Meerkat	Manual File Sync	Proprietary Alternatives
Real-time transform sync	✅	❌	Partial
Conflict resolution	✅	❌	Partial
Presence indicators	✅	❌	Some
Open-source	✅	✅	❌
Works inside Blender	✅	❌	❌
Cloud relay (optional)	✅	❌	✅
Peer-to-peer option	✅	❌	❌

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Features

• Multiplayer Scene Editing — Multiple artists editing the same scene simultaneously
• Live Transforms — Object position, rotation, and scale synced in real-time
• Shared Sessions — Host or join a session directly from the Blender UI panel
• Conflict Resolution — Handles simultaneous edits gracefully without overwriting work
• Presence Indicators — See who's in the session and what they're selecting
• Peer-to-Peer Option — Direct connections without a relay server when on the same network
• Cloud Relay — Optional hosted relay for remote teams (no port forwarding required)

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Roadmap

• Phase 1 (Weeks 1-2): Rust server foundation - WebSocket server, session state, event handlers, and broadcast infrastructure.
• Phase 2 (Weeks 2-3): Blender plugin skeleton - addon structure, connect/disconnect flow, and initial full state sync.
• Phase 3 (Weeks 3-4): Object lifecycle sync - create/delete/sync for primitives, cameras, lights, and asset references.
• Phase 4 (Weeks 4-5): Transform and property sync - 30Hz throttled transforms, property updates, and name syncing.
• Phase 5 (Weeks 5-6): Presence and resilience - users panel, selection highlights, robust full sync, reconnect handling, and scene export.
• Phase 6 (Weeks 6-7): Observability and durability - file-backed event log, crash recovery, metrics endpoint, and benchmarking.
• Phase 7 (Weeks 7-8): Polish and deployment - Docker, cloud deployment (WSS), rate limits, packaging, ADRs, and launch demo.

Detailed implementation checklist: CLAUDE.MD (see Implementation Phases).

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Architecture

Meerkat is split into two components:

• Rust backend (tokio + axum) — Handles WebSocket sessions, object ID/transform diffing, and relay logic. Only transmits object IDs and transforms rather than full mesh data, keeping bandwidth minimal.
• Python Blender plugin — Hooks into Blender's depsgraph update handlers to capture and broadcast local changes, and applies incoming remote deltas to the scene.

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Requirements

Runtime

Dependency	Purpose
Blender 4.0+	Plugin host
Python 3.10+	Bundled with Blender
Rust 1.75+	Backend server (if self-hosting)

Build (source installs only)

• Rust 1.75+
• Python 3.10+
• Blender 4.0+ (for plugin testing)

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Installation

Alpha not yet released. Instructions will be finalized for the first release. Watch the repo or join the discussion to be notified.

From source (backend):

git clone https://github.com/arryllopez/meerkat.git
cd meerkat
cargo build --release

Plugin (Blender):

# Coming soon — will be installable via Blender's Add-on preferences
Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install → select meerkat.zip

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Usage

# Start the relay server (self-hosted)
./meerkat-server

# Or connect to the hosted relay — configured directly in the Blender panel

Inside Blender, open the Meerkat side panel (N key → Meerkat tab):

Action	Description
Host Session	Start a new collaborative session
Join Session	Connect to an existing session by ID
Leave Session	Disconnect from the current session
View Peers	See who's currently connected

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Development

cargo build         # Build backend binary
cargo test          # Run unit/integration tests
cargo clippy        # Lint (enforced via pre-commit)

Plugin development:

# Symlink plugin into Blender's addons directory for live reloading
ln -s $(pwd)/plugin ~/.config/blender/4.x/scripts/addons/meerkat

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome — especially around networking, Blender Python API expertise, and conflict resolution strategies.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feat/your-feature)
3. Commit your changes
4. Open a Pull Request

Have a question or idea? Start a discussion.

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Featured In

Know a place Meerkat should be listed? Open an issue or submit a PR.

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Star History

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License

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

• You can use, modify, and distribute this software freely.
• Any derivative work must also be open-source under GPLv3.
• No proprietary forks.

See the LICENSE file for full details.