Discuss the UI of NetRender / Render Collection - (renamed from render multiple savers)

[AltaArts]

Currently, a Saver is added to the comp for each Render State. And when publishing, each State is executed one after another as in other DCC's.

But Fusion can render multiple Savers at once, so maybe it would be good to have that ability? Currently for example if there are three Render States - and thus three Savers - it will take 3 x as long to render.

[Animatect]

We'll do a different function to handle this scenario from the rclick menu -we need to disable what is not ran. -we need to save the state of the state manager -we need to run outputs only -we need to restore state -we need to update master version.

[Animatect]

I was thinking about this and I think a good way to handle this is to have a "local" mode on the NetRender State, this should do exactly what we want to do, and you could have how many local states you need and just send them to render, we can even embed which states should be disabled from the state to just run it as many times as we need with it handling turning on or off the savers. maybe even its own state type, like LocalRender.

What do you think?

[AltaArts]

Yeah, I don't think it fits with NetRender, as that would be hard for a user to feature-find. I think like we werer talking about before where there would be a right-click item for a folder, where you can render all the states within a folder at once.

That was a user can choose to render line by line (which some people may want), or they can group them in a folder and render all at once.

How's that sound?

[AltaArts]

Since this would be part of what we are discussing, I thought to just reuse this conversion.

So I was able to get the NetRender to work on my side, although with issues that were probably introduced with the new renaming code. But I don't think it matters since we are going to change things anyway.

First question: how do we want to handle the issue of FusionRenderNode.exe having the service that Deadline cannot kill. I do not know if you run into that problem, but usually the solution is to stop the FusionServer service. That allows Deadline to work, but then the native Fusion Render Manager does not work. This is at least what I get, have you solved that in your studio?

If not, I think we need to find a way to allow Deadline to work, but also have the native ability as well.

What do you think?

[Animatect]

yes I've ran into this issue, it is not a permanent issue and I have a few solutions in mind, but honestly the simpler one is to inform the user, I also agree 100% with you about having both options.

[AltaArts]

Cool. How do you all have it set up?

On mine, I have the service turned on since we have mainly network-rendered through Fusion’s manager – which for us is rare anyway, as most of our renders do not take a lot of time.

But I would like to move to the StateManager way of doing it for all the benefits.

[Animatect]

We can run a batch script to kill the existing process when fusion launches or we can just let the user know via message when fusion closes if the process is running, both would have to be done by a "sentry" process and both may have admin issues

[AltaArts]

I had some time this morning and did a mockup of the GroupRender state. I made a new branch for it; there was one called StateManager UI fix (IIRC), but that was for the QGridLoayout vs QVLayout thing, which I think we can delete that branch).

It is not functional to render, but it adds the state and we can at least discuss the UI.

Take a look whenever and let me know what you think.

[Animatect]

I've been swamped these past few days but I'll try to check it tomorrow, the only thing that jumps out to me a bit is that I'm still not clear if we go with the group behavior or something like you proposed with a permanent net/local render state that stores lists of saver configurations and from we can switch and send to render.

[AltaArts]

I know what you mean. I was trying to think of a way to make it easy for the user, and not too complicated. So I tried to take all the things we chatted about and put them in here, but keep it still "Prism-y".

So this adds a RenderGroup state, which if we wanted to can be auto-reordered to the top of the list to make it permanat. And the RenderGroup holds the list of ImageRenders (Savers) that will get rendered simultaneously either locally or via the farm. And we can add to RenderGroup "overrides" for things such as resolution, "HIQ", "proxy", frame range. etc. that would affect all the ImageRenders in that group.

This way, the RenderGroup does not change the ImageRender states themselves, but just acts as a reference holder with overrides if wanted. And maybe we can differentiate the RenderGroup in the state list with another color.

Oh, and I just noticed that this broke the adding a new Render State via the normal "Render" button. That will be made to work as normal, this is just for the UI.

Hope that masks sense. But what you thinking?

[Animatect]

I like it, I came early to the office today to get at leas 3 solid hrs of devtime, I'm planning to push a few things today, maybe we can meet on Friday to discuss?

[AltaArts]

Wow, that is early! I do the same and love the quiet time in the morning to concentrate before the phone starts.

And I should be good with Fri. Just let me know a good time for you.

[Animatect]

lol yeah, just after I posted I had to get busy with a server but I managed to get some progress, hopefully I can put a solid hour today and nail it to the wall :) What is the earliest you can meet on Friday?

[AltaArts]

Fab! I am two hours ahead of you, so anytime really for me. I tend to start pretty early.

[AltaArts]

Morning. So I had just a little time over the weekend to work on the UI of this. I uploaded the new UI for you to take a look at. The UI works, but the render functionality is still not there. I may have some time to start on the actual functions, but may get pulled way.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

[Animatect]

Perfect!, I'll take a look this afternoon, today I think I'll have time to fix the Loader positioning ticket.

[AltaArts]

Fab! It is getting there I think.

Sorry was out of the office today, and prob won't have a lot of time over the next week or so to really hit it, but hopefully soon.

[Animatect]

Dont sweat it, I've been super busy myself and apprently getting sick again, I worked on Loader positioning, I hope to finish that and version comparison over the weekend.