Holodeck

Holodeck is a command-line tool that renders Blender animations as slide decks that can be viewed in a web browser.

Because Holodeck works with pre-rendered frames, it can produce slide decks with much higher visual fidelity than a tool like Google Slides, while still feeling real-time during a presentation.

Holodeck renders frames as avif images, which has excellent compression and is supported in all browsers.

Live demo: jbellenger.github.io/holodeck

Quickstart

1. Download Holodeck

Download the latest Holodeck asset for your system from the Releases page. Choose the macOS, Linux, or Windows archive for a standalone executable.

Unpack the archive and put the holodeck executable somewhere on your PATH. Then check that it runs:

holodeck --help

Blender must also be available on your PATH unless you pass a specific Blender executable with --blender.

If none of the standalone executable assets match your system, download the PEX asset instead. The PEX requires Python 3.11 or newer:

python path/to/holodeck.pex --help

The examples below use holodeck. If you use the PEX asset, replace holodeck with python path/to/holodeck.pex.

2. Configure Your Blend File

Holodeck reads presentation timing from the active Blender scene:

• The scene frame range controls which frames are exported.
• The scene FPS controls playback speed in the browser.
• Timeline markers define slide boundaries and pause points.
• Marker names are ignored; only marker frame numbers matter.

In Blender, add timeline markers with M on the frames where the presentation should pause. During playback, pressing space or tapping advances from the current marker to the next marker.

Markers outside the rendered frame range are ignored. Marker frame numbers are stored relative to the scene start frame, so a marker on the first rendered frame becomes marker 0 in the exported manifest.

3. Build Your Holodeck

Run build with a source .blend file and an output directory:

holodeck build path/to/deck.blend dist --title "My Deck"

build renders the frames, writes manifest.json, and installs the browser player assets into the output directory. The result is a static site that can be served locally or uploaded to a static host.

Useful build options:

holodeck build path/to/deck.blend dist --scene "Scene"
holodeck build path/to/deck.blend dist --res-pct 50
holodeck build path/to/deck.blend dist --render-engine cycles
holodeck build path/to/deck.blend dist --markers-only

• --scene renders a specific Blender scene instead of the active scene.
• --res-pct overrides Blender's render resolution percentage.
• --render-engine overrides the Blend file render engine with eevee, cycles, or workbench.
• --markers-only renders only marker frames and writes a marker-only manifest.
• --title sets the generated player page title.

4. Play Your Holodeck Locally

Use serve to preview an existing Holodeck output directory:

holodeck serve dist

By default, the server binds to port 8000 and opens the player in your default browser. You can override either behavior:

holodeck serve dist --port 9000
holodeck serve dist --no-open

Common presenter shortcuts:

• Press space or tap to animate to the next marker. A small white pixel appears in the bottom-right corner of the visible frame while animation is running.
• Press the left or right arrow keys to jump between markers.
• Press F or swipe up to enter fullscreen.

5. Refresh Your Holodeck

Use refresh when the rendered frame files already exist, but the player bundle or manifest needs to be regenerated. A common example is moving timeline markers after rendering; refresh can update manifest.json without re-rendering every frame.

holodeck refresh path/to/deck.blend dist --title "My Deck"

refresh reads the Blend file metadata, verifies that the expected rendered frames exist, rewrites manifest.json, and reinstalls the browser player assets. If the actual frame images changed, use build or render-frames instead.

6. Render a Subset of Frames

Use render-frames with --frames when only a few frame images need to be re-rendered:

holodeck render-frames path/to/deck.blend dist --frames "48,72-96"
holodeck render-frames path/to/deck.blend dist --render-engine workbench
holodeck refresh path/to/deck.blend dist --title "My Deck"

Frame ranges are inclusive, and comma-separated segments are allowed. For example, "4", "4-10", and "1,2,3,20-24" are all valid frame specs.

render-frames updates files under render/, but it does not update manifest.json, so run refresh afterwards when the manifest should reflect new Blend metadata or rendered frame fingerprints.

7. Deploy Your Holodeck

A built Holodeck output directory is a static site and can be uploaded to any static site host, such as GitHub Pages, S3, CloudFront, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages.

For GitHub Pages, publish the output directory as your Pages artifact or copy it to the branch or directory configured for Pages. If you publish from a directory named docs/, add a .nojekyll file so GitHub Pages serves the bundled assets without Jekyll processing.

For S3, sync the output directory to a bucket configured for static website hosting or serve it through CloudFront:

aws s3 sync dist s3://your-bucket/path/

The player uses relative asset paths, so the same output can be served from a domain root or a subdirectory.

Tips And Tricks

workbench rendering

The --render-engine option override lets you render with a different engine without changing the saved setting in the .blend file. If you do not pass --render-engine, Holodeck uses the render engine that is already configured in the file.

Workbench rendering is useful when you want fast feedback on timing, camera motion, and animation. You can render the whole deck with Workbench first:

holodeck build path/to/deck.blend dist --render-engine workbench

After the timing feels right, you can re-render selected frames or ranges with a final engine. This is useful when only part of the deck needs more visual polish:

holodeck render-frames path/to/deck.blend dist --frames "48,72-96" --render-engine cycles

You can also omit --render-engine during the final pass if the .blend file already has the final engine selected.