Claude Opus 5.5 + Blender: Zero Skills Needed (Complete Setup)

Connect Claude Opus 5.5 to Blender with Claude Code and Blender's own MCP add-on, step by step on a Mac. Then it builds a 3D island from one sentence, a chair from one photo, finds two mistakes I planted, animates the camera, UV unwraps and exports a 3D-print file. Filmed 9 Nov 2026. What you need - Blender 5.1 or newer (free). I used Blender 5.2.3 LTS. - The uv tool (free). - Claude Code, with a Claude plan that includes Opus 5.5 (Pro or higher; the free plan doesn't include it). 1. Install the tools (Homebrew: https://brew.sh) brew install --cask blender blender --version | head -1 brew install uv uv --version brew install --cask claude-code claude --version 2. Install Blender's own MCP add-on (Blender Lab MCP v1.0.3) curl -LO https://projects.blender.org/lab/blender_mcp/releases/download/v1.0.3/mcp-1.0.3.zip ls -lh mcp-1.0.3.zip blender -c extension install-file -r user_default --enable mcp-1.0.3.zip Then in Blender: Edit → Preferences → System → Network → tick "Allow Online Access". Then Add-ons → MCP → "Start MCP Bridge Server" (after that it starts on its own). 3. Connect Claude Code to Blender claude mcp add --scope user blender -- uvx --from "git+https://projects.blender.org/lab/blender_mcp.git@v1.0.3#subdirectory=mcp" blender-mcp claude mcp get blender 4. Use it mkdir blender-demo cd blender-demo claude Then type /model and pick Opus 5.5. The prompts I typed (long ones shortened) - What's in my Blender scene right now? - Put a shiny red ball on top of the cube. - Start from an empty scene. Build a small low-poly island at sunset: a lighthouse, a wooden dock with a little boat, a few palm trees, and calm sea around it. Add warm sunset lighting and a camera that frames the whole island nicely. Then render it to ~/blender-demo/island.png and save ~/blender-demo/island.blend. - Open ~/blender-demo/island_broken.blend. I broke two things in this scene on purpose. Look at it through the camera and from two other angles, find what looks wrong, and fix it. Then render, save ~/blender-demo/island_fixed.blend, and list what you changed. - Open ~/blender-demo/island_fixed.blend. Animate the camera so it slowly circles the island once over 10 seconds, always looking at the lighthouse. Then render the animation as a video file, ~/blender-demo/island_orbit.mp4, at 1280x720 and 24 frames per second. - Open ~/blender-demo/island_fixed.blend. Two jobs. First, UV unwrap the lighthouse so it is ready for a painted texture, and show me its UV layout in the UV Editing workspace. Second, export just the lighthouse as an STL file for 3D printing, ~/blender-demo/lighthouse.stl, about 10 cm tall, and tell me if it is printable as it is. - Look at the photo ~/blender-demo/rocking_chair.jpg. Using the Blender that is open right now, through your Blender tools, start a new empty scene and build this rocking chair as closely as you can, with a camera at the same angle as the photo and a plain light grey background. Then render it and save ~/blender-demo/chair.blend. My results (one Mac, these runs; times vary) - Island from one sentence: 4 min 54 s. API-equivalent cost of two test builds: about $0.92 and $1.15. - Two planted mistakes (boat lifted 1.5 m, a palm sunk 2.5 m): found and fixed in 5 of 5 runs, checked by reading the heights in the saved files. With nothing broken, it changed nothing. - Camera orbit: 240 frames, 10.0 s. STL: 100 mm tall, with a warning about parts thinner than 1 mm. - $0 test: Claude Code + Ollama (qwen3.5:9b, ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434) connected and described the scene, but a simple snowman build hadn't finished after 27 minutes. Stay safe: the add-on runs Claude's code in Blender with no guards; Blender's team recommends a virtual machine. Save your work, use a copy, and never run two Blender MCP add-ons at once (port 9876). Sources - Blender Lab MCP server: https://www.blender.org/lab/mcp-server/ - Blender Lab MCP releases: https://projects.blender.org/lab/blender_mcp/releases - Community add-on (MCP for Blender): https://github.com/ahujasid/mcp-for-blender - Claude Opus 5.5: https://www.anthropic.com/claude/opus - Ollama and Claude Code: https://docs.ollama.com/api/anthropic-compatibility - Chair photo: Rocking Chair (USA), ca. 1900, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Chapters 0:00 Claude Opus 5.5 builds 3D in Blender 0:31 What you'll learn 0:50 What you need (and what it costs) 1:27 How Claude connects to Blender (MCP) 2:15 Install Blender, uv and Claude Code on a Mac 3:06 Install the Blender MCP add-on 4:09 Connect Claude Code to Blender (MCP) 4:32 Your first test: what's in my scene? 5:22 Build a 3D island from one sentence 6:28 I broke it on purpose: does Claude notice? 7:20 Animate the camera and export a video 7:51 UV unwrap and a 3D-print STL 8:33 Build a 3D model from one photo 9:12 Can it be free? A $0 test with Ollama 9:50 Blender MCP not working? Fixes 10:20 Stay safe 10:51 Recap