Blender and Maya plugins

Block the move in 3D. Finish it in VisionX.

You already know what the camera does. The clay bridge renders that move out of Blender or Maya, uploads it in one click, and drops you into the composer with the render attached as a reference, so the generation follows your blocking instead of guessing at it from a sentence. Or stay where you are: price the shot in the sidebar, accept the figure, and the finished clip comes back into your scene.

How the handoff works

Three clicks from a blockout to a shot

No export, no file wrangling, no re-uploading the same clip into a browser tab. The plugin does the round trip and hands you the composer, or runs the generation itself if you would rather not open a tab at all.

01

Block it and render clay

Set your camera and your frame range, then let the plugin render a flat clay pass at 720p or 1080p, or a single frame as a still. Blender uses a Workbench single-colour pass; Maya forces a clay look onto a playblast. Every render setting it touches is snapshotted and restored, so a failed render never leaves your scene rewired.

02

Upload to VisionX

One button, on a worker thread with a live progress bar and a Cancel that works. The clip is hashed on your machine and uploaded as a normal workspace reference, so a retry after a dropped connection resumes rather than creating a second copy. Uploads cost 0 VX.

03

Land in the composer, or stay put

Your browser opens on the studio with that reference already attached, ready for a video-to-video generation. Pick the model, the look and the length there, where the price is on screen before you spend anything. In Blender and Maya the same generation runs from the panel instead, on a key you have scoped to allow it.

Who it is for

Built for the person who already owns the camera

If you can block a shot in a viewport, you can direct a generation with far more precision than a prompt gives you. The blockout you would have thrown away after the client call becomes the input. That is the gap this closes.

Your move, not a guess

A clay render carries your lens, your framing and your timing frame by frame. The generation inherits all of it, which is the part a prompt cannot describe and a still image cannot hold.

Cast still applies

The clay pass is one reference among the ones you already keep. Layer your Cast and your reference plates on top in the composer and the shot lands on-brand as well as on-camera.

Or never leave the viewport

Blender and Maya carry a Generate panel over the same models the studio runs. Take a quote, accept the price, and the finished clip or frame comes back into your scene as an image empty, a camera background, a movie clip or an image plane.

Nothing to install beside it

Python standard library only, running on the interpreter already inside Blender, Maya and Cinema 4D. No Node.js, no pip, no separate service on the workstation.

Or skip the render entirely

All three plugins take a Local File source. If your pipeline already produces a playblast or a Nuke render, point the plugin at it and use the upload leg on its own.

Only durable ids in URLs

The presigned upload URL is used once and never written down. What travels to the browser is the reference id, which your signed-in session resolves and re-signs on the spot.

What it costs

The bridge is free. The render is not.

There is no plugin licence and no per-seat charge for the bridge, and uploads cost nothing. What costs VX is the generation, at the same price whether you run it in the browser or in the panel.

  • Uploads are 0 VX. Identical to dragging a file into the composer. Render as many clay passes as the shot needs.
  • Generation bills exactly as it would in the composer. Video to video, priced on input seconds we measure on our side rather than trusting a client-reported length.
  • You approve every spend. Through the handoff the plugin hands over a reference and stops, so nothing is queued and nothing is charged until you press the button in the studio. In the Generate panel it prices the shot first and sends only the figure you accepted.
  • Ceilings ride on the key. A per-job and per-day VX cap sits on every credential, so a key left on a shared workstation has a bounded blast radius even before you revoke it. An upload-only key has no blast radius at all: without the generate scope it cannot start a generation.
Price a shot
WHAT THE PLUGIN DOESILLUSTRATIVE
> Clay Render & Upload

  render clay pass     -> 240 frames, 1080p, 10.0s
  create_upload        -> presigned PUT, used once
  finalize_upload      -> reference ready, 0 VX
  open browser         -> /studio?ref=<reference_id>

> the composer takes it from here

  you pick model, look, length
  the price is on screen before you run it

> or Generate, in Blender and Maya

  estimate_cost        -> the price, on the button
  generate_video       -> only the figure you accepted
  poll + download      -> back into your scene
Before you install

Three things have to be true

Two of them are settings on your workspace rather than anything you do on the workstation, so it is worth checking them before you wonder why the upload button refuses.

01

An MCP-enabled workspace

The bridge uploads through the same media tools our MCP server exposes, so the workspace has to be switched on for MCP. Studio Scale and Enterprise workspaces already are. On other plans it is a toggle on our side, not something a key can override.

02

A seat that is not view-only

Your role is re-checked live on every call. A viewer seat is narrowed to read-only whatever scopes the key carries, which shows up as a refusal on the upload rather than at install time.

03

An API key with the right scopes

Mint one under Settings, API keys, walked through just below. The plugin preset carries read and media:write and provably cannot spend VX; the second preset adds generate, which is what the Generate panel needs. It is shown once. Give each workstation its own so you can revoke one machine without touching the others.

The same key type drives our MCP server, so if you already point an agent at VisionX you can reuse that credential here. See the MCP server for what else it unlocks.

API key

Minting the key the plugin asks for

You mint this yourself in the browser, once per workstation. It takes about a minute, and nothing about it is sales assisted.

01

Open Settings, API keys

Sign in, open the profile menu at the top right and pick API keys & plugins, or go straight to vxstudio.ai/settings/api. Every member can open it and manage their own keys.

02

Choose the plugin preset

Name the key after the machine it will live on. Pick VisionX plugin (Blender/Maya) for a handoff-only key that cannot spend VX, or Plugin + in-viewport generation if that machine should also generate. Set a per-day ceiling while you are there, then press Create key.

03

Copy it before you close the page

The key begins with vxsk_ and is shown once, because we only ever store a hash of it. Paste it into the plugin: Blender in the add-on preferences, Maya and Cinema 4D in the connection field at the top of the window. If you lose it, revoke that row and mint another.

If the screen warns that MCP is not switched on for your workspace, the key will still mint but every call will be refused until it is. Studio Scale and Enterprise workspaces are already on. On other plans it is a toggle on our side, so ask us and we will enable it.

Install

Per host application

Both downloads are built from the same release, so the two uploaders always agree with each other and with the platform.

Blender

A Blender 4.2 or newer extension. Drag the zip onto a Blender window, or use Preferences, Get Extensions, Install from Disk.

01

Install the extension

Drop the zip onto Blender, or Preferences, Get Extensions, Install from Disk. It declares network and file permissions, which is what the upload needs.

02

Paste your key once

Open the add-on preferences and paste the API key. It is remembered in Blender userpref, so you do this per machine rather than per session.

03

Find the panel

3D Viewport, then the N sidebar, then the VisionX tab. Clay Render & Upload does the handoff: pick Source Camera, a still frame or Local File and press upload. Generate sits under it.

Maya

Maya 2024 or newer. The installer writes a Maya module file pointing at the folder you unzipped, so nothing is copied into your Maya install and an update is just a re-unzip.

01

Run the installer

Unzip somewhere permanent, then run install_maya_plugin.command on macOS or install_maya_plugin.bat on Windows. It writes the module file and tells you what to do next.

02

Load the plug-in

Restart Maya, open the Plug-in Manager, load visionx_clay_bridge_maya.py and tick Auto load. A VisionX menu appears with Clay Render & Upload under it, and that one window carries both the upload and the Generate sections.

MACOSTERMINAL, IF YOU PREFER
unzip visionx_clay_bridge_maya-0.3.0.zip \
  -d ~/visionx
~/visionx/install_maya_plugin.command

Maya renders through a viewport playblast forced into a clay look, which needs the QuickTime H.264 encoders. On a Windows box without them the playblast path stops with guidance instead of failing silently: export an mp4 yourself and use the Local File source, which uploads identically.

Cinema 4D

Written against the same uploader core, with the clay clip, the still frame, the Local File source and the same non-blocking upload. It has no Generate panel, and it has not had a pass on a real Cinema 4D install yet, so we are not putting a download button on it. If Cinema 4D is where your blocking lives, say so at shaurya@vxstudio.ai and we will put you on the first build.

Honest limits

What it will not do yet

Better to read these here than to meet them mid-shot. Everything below is a real constraint in the current release, not a caveat we expect to argue about.

Containers and size

Clips as mp4, mov or m4v; stills as png, jpg or webp. 500 MB either way. Anything else is refused at upload rather than halfway through a render, webm included: we measure a clip by walking its container, a webm gives up no length, and a video reference without one cannot be generated from. A still is sent as an opening frame for image to video, which every video model accepts.

Two to thirty seconds

Under two seconds is refused. Over fifteen is only accepted by Seedance 2.5, so the plugins warn there and block past thirty. The warning is measured on the frame range you are about to render; a local file is measured on our side at upload. A still is an anchor rather than a clip, so no duration budget applies to it.

1080p is the ceiling on what you send

Frames at or under 1920x1080. The pixel window our video models accept per frame tops out just above UHD and DCI 4K falls outside it, so the render presets offer 720p and 1080p and nothing wider. What comes back is a separate choice, clamped to whatever the model you picked supports.

The key sits in DCC preferences

Blender stores it in userpref, Maya in optionVars, Cinema 4D in its world container, all in plaintext on the operator’s machine. That is the same trust level as the DCC itself. Mint a key per machine, give it read and media:write for the handoff and add generate only where that machine should be able to spend, and revoke it when the machine changes hands.

The render blocks the UI, the upload does not

Clay rendering runs on the DCC’s main thread, so the window sits still for the few seconds a 1080p pass takes. Everything that talks to us runs on a worker with a real progress fraction and a Cancel that works, on all three hosts. Cancelling a generation in Blender or Maya also cancels the job on our side, so you stop paying for a render you stopped watching.

Generation from the viewport is Blender and Maya only

Blender and Maya both generate video and images; Cinema 4D has no Generate panel at all and stays a handoff. Wherever the panel exists it prices the shot first and spends only the figure you accepted, so a key without the generate scope cannot start anything.

FAQ

Questions, answered

What does the plugin actually send?
A short H.264 video or a single still: either a clay pass through your chosen camera, or a file you pick from disk. It is uploaded as a normal reference on your workspace, then the composer opens with that reference already attached. A clip arrives ready for a video-to-video generation, a still as the opening frame for image to video.
What does it cost?
The upload costs 0 VX, exactly like dragging a file into the composer. Generation is billed the same whether you run it in the browser or in the plugin: video to video is priced on input seconds we measure server side, and the figure is on screen before you commit. A key minted without the generate scope cannot spend at all.
Can I generate without leaving Blender or Maya?
Yes, with a key that carries the generate scope. Pick a model from the catalog we serve, take a quote, and press Generate. The plugin polls the job and downloads the result: Blender drops it in as an image empty, a camera background or a movie clip, Maya as an image plane. Cinema 4D has no Generate panel.
Does the camera move survive?
That is the whole point of sending a render rather than a still. The clay pass carries your blocking, your lens and your timing, and the generation follows it instead of inventing a move from a text description.
Do I need Node.js or a pip install?
No. All three plugins are Python standard library only and run on the Python that ships inside Blender, Maya and Cinema 4D. There is nothing to install beside the plugin itself.
What do I need before it will work?
An MCP-enabled workspace, a seat that is not view-only, and an API key with the read and media:write scopes. Add the generate scope if that machine should also be able to generate from the panel. A viewer seat is narrowed to read-only on every call no matter what the key was minted with.
Is the upload URL safe to have on my machine?
The plugin asks for a presigned upload URL, uses it once, and never writes it to a log or a preference. The only thing that travels in the browser URL afterwards is the durable reference id, which your signed-in session resolves and re-signs.
Can I use it on a render farm or in a batch script?
The uploader is a plain stdlib client, so it can be driven from Maya batch or a Blender background script. Give that machine its own key with a per-day ceiling so a copied script cannot run away with your credits.
Is there a Cinema 4D version?
The port is written against the same uploader core and does the clay clip, the still frame, the Local File source and the same non-blocking upload. It has no Generate panel, and it has not had a pass on a real Cinema 4D install yet, so there is no download button for it here. Tell us you want it and we will put you on the first build.

Send your first blockout

Install the bridge, point it at a camera, and see what your own move looks like once a model has rendered it.