Network Rendering Improvements
Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 11:47 am
Hi,
over the last year I compiled a feature whishlist for maxwell network rendering. It also contains some bugs I stumbled upon.
Bugs
- Jobs have the status "rendering" even though no nodes are rendering the scene
- nodes that are released from a job can't be added to that job again, except on animation jobs
- after nodes are released, they start working on a new job but are still listed under the old job as well as the new job
- The Network Monitor often does display an older state of the renderfarm. It needs to be restarted to refresh the view. A refresh button or auto refresh would be great.
Feature Whishlist
- Edit job settings after the job was added but has not started rendering (all settings)
- Edit job settings after the job has started rendering (SL, Time, Output Directory, Fileformat)
- Offline nodes. Renderjobs are added to the renderque during the day. All workstations get added to the renderfarm at night. Now all the workstation rendernodes need to be added to jobs manually. It would be better if those nodes could be switched to an Offline mode during working hours (maybe even automatically based on time). This way they could be assigned to job right away but would only start rendering once they are free.
- Specify number of nodes for a job. Instead of choosing which nodes render a job it would be great to specify a number of nodes for a job. This would make it easier to distribute nodes to jobs.
- Restart a job. There is a cool STOP Button. Please add a play button or even better a Pause (stop rendering on nodes, don't merge) and Play (start/resume rendering) button.
- Display which nodes are added to a job, when the job has not started.
- Stop when frame is finished. When rendering animations it would be great if I could tell a rendernode to stop once the current frame is finished. That way I don't have to manually resume unfinished frames.
- Automatically restart crashed nodes.
- Automatically restart crashed manager.
- Fallback rendermanager. If the Rendermanager crashes or is offline, another machine should take its job.
Cheers, Florian
over the last year I compiled a feature whishlist for maxwell network rendering. It also contains some bugs I stumbled upon.
Bugs
- Jobs have the status "rendering" even though no nodes are rendering the scene
- nodes that are released from a job can't be added to that job again, except on animation jobs
- after nodes are released, they start working on a new job but are still listed under the old job as well as the new job
- The Network Monitor often does display an older state of the renderfarm. It needs to be restarted to refresh the view. A refresh button or auto refresh would be great.
Feature Whishlist
- Edit job settings after the job was added but has not started rendering (all settings)
- Edit job settings after the job has started rendering (SL, Time, Output Directory, Fileformat)
- Offline nodes. Renderjobs are added to the renderque during the day. All workstations get added to the renderfarm at night. Now all the workstation rendernodes need to be added to jobs manually. It would be better if those nodes could be switched to an Offline mode during working hours (maybe even automatically based on time). This way they could be assigned to job right away but would only start rendering once they are free.
- Specify number of nodes for a job. Instead of choosing which nodes render a job it would be great to specify a number of nodes for a job. This would make it easier to distribute nodes to jobs.
- Restart a job. There is a cool STOP Button. Please add a play button or even better a Pause (stop rendering on nodes, don't merge) and Play (start/resume rendering) button.
- Display which nodes are added to a job, when the job has not started.
- Stop when frame is finished. When rendering animations it would be great if I could tell a rendernode to stop once the current frame is finished. That way I don't have to manually resume unfinished frames.
- Automatically restart crashed nodes.
- Automatically restart crashed manager.
- Fallback rendermanager. If the Rendermanager crashes or is offline, another machine should take its job.
Cheers, Florian