What you need

Everything to have ready before you start, for making films in the browser, from a Blender previs, or with an AI agent.

What you need depends on how you want to work. Everyone needs the first list. The others only apply if you use that path.

Every studio

• A Runpod account with credit on it. The recommended GPU costs about $0.72/hour; see What it costs.
• A free Hugging Face account and a read token. The video model is gated: you accept its terms on two model pages and paste the token into the studio. The studio walks you through it in Quickstart step 5.
• A modern browser.

Nothing needs to be installed on your computer for this.

A previs by hand

A previs is a plain grey 3D blockout that sets the camera moves and cuts (see Make a film with a previs). To make one yourself you need:

• Blender 4.2 or later, free. Tested with 5.2. You should be comfortable placing cameras and keyframing simple shapes.
• From Blender you export, for each scene:
  • a playblast: a plain video of the blockout, at the length and frame rate of the finished scene;
  • a depth video (recommended): the same camera moves rendered as distance, near objects bright and far ones dark, with a smooth falloff;
  • a sequences.json (optional): the cut times, so the studio can create the shots for you. You can type the cut times in instead.

{
  "fps": 24,
  "sequences": [
    {
      "name": "Scene 1",
      "file": "playblast.mp4",
      "shots": [
        { "shot": 1, "name": "Wide", "beat": "The car rounds the bend", "start_s": 0.0, "end_s": 3.0 },
        { "shot": 2, "name": "Close-up", "beat": "Rosa grins at the wheel", "start_s": 3.0, "end_s": 5.0 }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Each shot’s start_s and end_s are seconds from the start of its sequence’s video.

If that sounds like a lot, an AI agent can build the blockout, render both videos and write the file for you. That needs the list below.

An AI agent

An agent works through the studio’s MCP server (and its REST API), so it can do everything you can do in the browser. You need:

• An AI agent that supports MCP. The studio is tested with Claude Code. Other MCP clients work with the same address and token.
• Your studio’s agent token, and the agent connected to your studio. Use an AI agent shows how; it takes about two minutes.

For the agent to build the previs too, the computer the agent runs on also needs:

• Blender 4.2 or later. The agent runs it in the background; you don’t need to open it.
• ffmpeg on the command line (on a Mac: brew install ffmpeg).
• Python 3, which macOS and most Linux systems already have.
• The blender-previs skill, which teaches the agent the studio’s previs method. It’s in the studio’s GitHub repository; Use an AI agent shows how to add it.