hosting.md

Hosting a Mixer server

The simplest way of hosting a server is probably to use a VPN solution like https://www.zerotier.com/ (open source, with a free tier).

When running a server under Windows 10, pay attention to the Windows firewall popup and take care to enable communication with the python.exe provided with Blender.

Setup with Zerotier

Follow the Zerotier documentation to setup a network

On the machine that hosts the server

• start Zerotier and connect to your Zerotier network
• start Blender, open the Mixer tray, leave host as localhost, leave port to the default value (12800), in Advanced Options check Show server console and click Connect. This starts the server with a console.

On client machines

• start Zerotier and connect to your Zerotier network.
• start Blender, open the Mixer tray, leave port to the default value (12800), type in host the Zerotier address of the machine that hosts the server, then click Connect.

Setup with port forwarding

Alternatively, you can configure NAT rules on your router for port forwarding. Default port of Mixer is 12800, so a basic rule would be to forward 12800 on your router to 12800 on the computer hosting the server.

Once this is done find your router public IP address with http://whatismyip.host/ and share it with other participants. They can connect to your server by replacing localhost with this IP in the panel.

You also need to ensure you have no firewall blocking incoming connections.