Docker Image for Blender GPU rendering

This image contains packages needed for running GPU-accelerated Blender on systems with Linux and Nvidia GPU. Blender can run in GUI mode or from command-line.

This image is based on nvidia/cudagl and contains CUDA 10.2 & OpenGL. Blender is fetched from repositories by Thomas Schiex.

Available tags

• latest points to 2.80
• 2.80
• 2.80beta
• 2.79b

Requirements

Your host system needs to have nvidia-docker2 installed and NVIDIA GPU driver version >= 440.33.

Running

• Run container with Blender in GUI mode

  $ docker run --runtime=nvidia -it --rm -e DISPLAY -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -v "$(pwd)":/tmp/blender jtomori/blender_gpu:latest

• Run container with Blender in command-line mode

  $ docker run --runtime=nvidia -it --rm -e DISPLAY -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -v "$(pwd)":/tmp/blender jtomori/blender_gpu:latest blender -b project_file.blend # your parameters here

• Run container with Bash shell

  $ docker run --runtime=nvidia -it --rm -e DISPLAY -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -v "$(pwd)":/tmp/blender jtomori/blender_gpu:latest bash

Notes

• Docker parameter -v "$(pwd)":/tmp/blender mounts current working directory to /tmp/blender in container
• -u $(id -u):$(id -g) sets container user to your user (user which is running the container)
  • this user will not exist in the container (Bash will issue a warning) which should be fine but some applications might not work correctly
  • it is however needed for access rights to X server and is useful for permissions and ownership on files created in container
  • if you skip this option then you need to run $ xhost +local:root (only once per system boot is needed)
    • otherwise you will get this error

      No protocol specified
      Unable to open a display
      

• Default working directory in container is set to /tmp/blender