BlendBuddy Documentation

Everything lives in the 3D Viewport sidebar: press N and open the BlendBuddy tab.

1. Quick Start

1. In Blender 4.2 or newer: Edit → Preferences → Get Extensions → ▾ → Install from Disk… and pick the BlendBuddy zip (blendbuddy-1.6.1.zip, or blendbuddy-1.6.1-halloween.zip for the Halloween Edition).
2. In the 3D Viewport press N and open the BlendBuddy tab. Your pet appears and starts exploring the viewport.
3. Give it a name in the Name field, and pick a look in the Look panel.

Your settings are saved in Blender's preferences, so your pet is the same in every file.

2. Playing With Your Pet

The checkbox in the panel header shows or hides the pet. If clicking does nothing, turn on Gizmos in the viewport header.

3. Look

Choose a Style at the top of the panel:

Characters

• Click the big preview to pick one of the 30 characters.
• Color Shift, Saturation and Brightness recolor it. Skin and eyes stay the same.
• Original Colors resets the colors.
• Accessory: party hat, top hat, crown, bow, headphones or flower, with its own color. Use Offset X / Y if it needs to sit higher or lower.

Build Your Own

Mix a Body (Cat, Bunny, Slime, Ghost), Eyes, Mouth, Blush and colors. Auto Outline makes the outline a darker shade of the body color.

Custom Sprite

• Use a transparent PNG with the frames side by side.
• Row 1 is idle, row 2 walk, row 3 sleep and row 4 happy. You can use only the first row.
• Set Frames per Row and Rows, then press Reload Sprite after editing the file.
• Flip When Walking Left mirrors the sprite when it walks the other way.

4. Friends NEW IN 1.6

Open the Friends panel and add up to 3 extra buddies. Pick a character for each one, or leave it on Random for a surprise.

• Play Together: friends play with each other and with your pet: they say hi, play tag, do the same trick together, play follow-the-leader, leapfrog over each other and sometimes throw a dance party. They nap together when you take a break.
• Click a friend to pet it (a trick and hearts), or hold and drag it anywhere.
• Shuffle (the refresh button) picks new characters for the Random friends.

Friends use the original character colors. They stay still while Behavior is set to Stay Put.

5. Scene Doctor

Press Check My Scene (or click your pet). BlendBuddy lists what it found, and most items have a one-click fix button. Some examples:

• No active camera → Add Camera
• Unapplied scale → Apply Scale
• Missing (pink) textures → Find Files
• No lights and a dark world → Add Sun

The pet also checks quietly in the background. Set how often in Behavior → Scene Check (min), or use 0 to turn it off.

6. Desktop & Sounds

• Sounds: turn the pet's sounds on or off, set the volume and press ▶ to hear a sample. Every trick, jump, landing, pick-up and drop has its own little sound.
• Footsteps: tiny step sounds while the pets walk (off by default).
• Music: a soft, looping 8-bit background song with its own volume (off by default).
• When Blender Is Hidden: what happens when a render or bake finishes while you're in another app. The options are Pet Pops Out, Notification, Both or Nothing.
• Lives In (Windows): Viewport or Desktop.
• Test Alert: shows the "render finished" alert after 3 seconds. Switch to another app to see it.

On macOS and Linux the desktop pet isn't available. You get a system notification instead, controlled by Notify After (sec).

7. Phone Notifications (Discord)

When a render finishes, your pet posts in your Discord channel and the Discord app pings your phone. The message includes the render picture, the file name and how long it took.

• Only If Longer Than (sec): skips quick test renders.
• Bakes Too: also notifies when a bake finishes.
• Attach Render Image: sends a JPEG of the finished render.

If your phone stays quiet while Discord is open on your PC: Discord only pings the phone when you're away from the PC app. Close it, or set Discord Settings → Notifications → Push Notification Inactive Timeout to the shortest time.

8. Behavior Settings

9. Troubleshooting

I can't click or drag the pet

Turn on Gizmos in the viewport header, and check that Behavior → Click & Drag is on.

The pet stopped moving

The BlendBuddy panel shows a message and a Restart Pet button. Press it.

No message on my phone

Check that Allow Online Access is on and the Phone Notifications checkbox is ticked, then press Send Test Message and read the result under the button. Renders shorter than Only If Longer Than are skipped on purpose.

I don't hear anything

Open Desktop & Sounds, make sure Sounds is on and the volume is up, and press ▶ to test. Still silent? Check Edit → Preferences → System → Sound → Audio Device is not set to None.