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· 9 min

Render Roblox Shorts in HQ on Google Cloud with free credits

By the end

Your own Google Cloud render farm, set up by Claude and paid with the free credits: one command renders a Short in high quality, and many Shorts render at the same time.

On a laptop, a 1-minute Short takes 1 to 2.5 hours, and it only renders at half size. In the Google cloud, big NVIDIA A100 cards render it in high quality in about 45 minutes. That normally costs about 10 euros per 1-minute Short, but new Google Cloud accounts get free credits ($300 at the time of writing), so your first renders cost nothing. When I built the engine, two full days of cloud tests cost me about 59 euros, all paid with those credits.

This guide comes after Make Roblox fight Shorts with Claude: you need the skill installed and one Short that passes its draft.

What you need

Get the free credits

0 of 10 done

  1. Step 1

    Start the free trial

    Go to console.cloud.google.com, sign in with your Google account, accept the terms and click Start free. Add your card when Google asks: it's only a check.

    It works if the Billing page shows your free credits.

  2. Step 2

    Upgrade to a paid account

    Click Billing, then Account overview, then Upgrade to a paid account. Your free credits stay, and they are still used first. Without this step, Google gives free-trial accounts no graphics cards.

  3. Step 3

    Make a project

    Click the project picker at the top of the page, then New project. Give it a name, like roblox-farm, and click Create. Copy its Project ID: you'll paste it to Claude in the next chapter.

  4. Step 4

    Set a budget alert

    Do this before your first render. Click Billing, then Budgets & alerts, then Create budget. Pick your project, set an amount you're happy with (for example 50), and keep the email alerts at 50 %, 90 % and 100 %.

    It works if your budget shows in the list.

Hand it to Claude

  1. Step 5

    Install the Google Cloud CLI and log in

    Install the Google Cloud CLI with its default options. Then, in Claude Code, type these two lines one at a time (the ! runs them right there), and log in with the same Google account each time:

    Prompt to copy
    ! gcloud auth login
    Prompt to copy
    ! gcloud auth application-default login

  2. Step 6

    Let Claude build your render farm

    Paste this in Claude Code, with your Project ID in the first line. It holds everything Claude needs: the names the engine expects and the recipe of the Blender render image.

    Prompt to copy
    use the nocodehack skill to set up its cloud render farm on my Google Cloud project <your project id>, so that tools/farm_run.py works. Ask me before anything that costs money. Do it in this order:
1. Turn on these APIs: aiplatform, artifactregistry, cloudbuild, storage, compute, cloudbilling.
2. Create the bucket gs://<your project id>-farm in europe-west4.
3. Create a Docker repository named farm in Artifact Registry in europe-west4, us-central1 and asia-southeast1.
4. Build this Dockerfile with Cloud Build and push it as blender:5.2.3 into the farm repository of each of the 3 regions:

FROM ubuntu:22.04
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=all LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/nvidia/lib64:/usr/local/nvidia/lib PATH=/usr/local/nvidia/bin:$PATH
RUN apt-get update -qq && apt-get install -y -qq curl xz-utils libxi6 libxxf86vm1 libxfixes3 libxrender1 libgl1 libxkbcommon0 libsm6 libice6 libegl1 > /dev/null && curl -sSL https://download.blender.org/release/Blender5.2/blender-5.2.3-linux-x64.tar.xz | tar -xJ -C /opt && ln -s /opt/blender-5.2.3-linux-x64/blender /usr/local/bin/blender && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
RUN printf '#!/bin/sh\nnvidia-smi -L 2>&1\nexec blender -b "$@"\n' > /run.sh && chmod +x /run.sh
ENTRYPOINT ["/run.sh"]

5. Save my project id in the user environment variable ENGINE_GCP_PROJECT, then run python tools/farm_run.py --refresh-prices.
6. Check my quota for preemptible A100 GPUs for Vertex AI custom training in the 3 regions, and tell me if it is 0.
7. Test it: render 1 still frame of one of my stories with python tools/farm_run.py <story> --scene s01 --stills 10, and show me the picture and its cost.

    Claude does it all from the terminal. The first time takes a while, because Google builds the Blender image (about 10 to 15 minutes).

    It works if Claude shows you the test still and its cost.

  3. Step 7

    Ask for GPUs if Google says no

    New projects sometimes start with zero GPUs. If Claude says the quota is 0, go to IAM & Admin, then Quotas & system limits, search preemptible A100, tick the line for the region Claude names, click Edit quotas and ask for 1. Claude gives you the exact sentence for the reason box. Small requests are often approved in minutes; ask for more later.

Use it

  1. Step 8

    Render one Short in high quality

    When the draft of a Short looks right, say:

    Prompt to copy
    looks good, render it in high quality on the cloud

    A 1-minute Short takes about 45 minutes, on spot A100 cards (cheaper, and the engine restarts a piece if Google takes a card back). Claude tells you the cost estimate before it starts.

    It works if you get the full-size 1080x1920 Short with sound in stories/<name>/.

  2. Step 9

    Make an old Short look better

    Made a Short at low quality on your laptop? The story is still there, so the cloud can render it again in high quality, without any new Claude work on the story:

    Prompt to copy
    render my Short <name> again in high quality on the cloud

  3. Step 10

    Render many Shorts at the same time

    This is where the cloud wins. On a laptop, Shorts wait in line. In the cloud, each one gets its own cards, so writing the stories (about 9 minutes of Claude each) becomes the limit:

    Prompt to copy
    use the nocodehack skill to make 5 Shorts from these ideas, check every draft, then render all 5 in high quality on the cloud at the same time:
1. a kid tries to hide a bad grade from his mom
2. what if a dragon went to school
3. rich kid vs poor kid on the first day of school
4. POV: you're the new guy at the dojo
5. a day in the life of a pizza delivery guy

Costs and safety

How much does it cost? About 10 euros for a 1-minute Short in high quality, less for shorter ones. Claude shows the estimate before each render and logs the real cost after.

What happens when the credits run out? Google stops the free trial and asks you to pay. Your budget alert emails you long before that, so you always see it coming.

Do I have to use the cloud? No. Low and medium quality on your own PC are free, and they work for posting.

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