Import settings from current project into BlendFarm

[amSnoop]

Note: I'm by no means a professional, but I really wanted this functionality for myself and figured other people might want it to. If the code is too messy or the solution is too "hacky," then no hard feelings and I'll just keep it on my fork for whoever stumbles upon it.

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This feature update adds the ability to upload the active project's settings into blendfarm so that you don't have to manually set them each time you load a project or restart the app. Works best if the client is running on a computer that has a render node as well. Functions by sending the file to one node and having it open blender and run a script to extract the settings from it.

Settings that can be imported include:

• Render Width
• Render Height
• Frame Start
• Frame End
• Rendering Samples (engine adaptable)
• Rendering Engine
• A list of cameras in the scene

That last option creates a dropdown menu that indicates which camera is currently active in the scene, but also allows you to choose any other camera to render with instead. This can enable you to use all of the render farm's power to see what the scene will look like from various angles.

Current Limitations:

• Needs to sync to a node and open Blender in order to function. This means that if you are not using a node on the same computer as the client, it can take a minute to import due to internet speeds.
• Potentially unpredictable behavior when trying to import settings while nodes are in the middle of rendering.
• Will still need to be done every time you open Blendfarm or a project, as Camera lists and Engine type are not savable as default settings.

To be improved:

• Adding thumbnail renders to the camera list so that you can easily see at a glance which camera sees what (probably done with eevee and a resolution of like 50x50 to make it as fast as it can. This would also be saved, and potentially could be re-rendered when you change the frame, but that would most likely require larger refactoring of the render task/request functionality.)
• Adding more options as-needed to import from blender and use in renders
• Saving the camera list and engine type so that they don't have to be reset every time you open a project

• Adding an option to import a list of scenes as a dropdown box instead of a textbox

  That's about it. This will require an update to the servers as well as the client, as a new packet type was added to accommodate requests for Blender Settings. That said, I did not mess with the version numbers in these files, and I do not know how to create a downloadable exe to be used as a release.

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  Default Settings with a default "Active Camera" and the "Import Blender Settings" button

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  Window allowing you to choose which settings to import.

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  After a second for importing, the result showing the settings have changed and the camera list is populated and shows which one is currently active in the scene.

[LogicReinc]

Hey @amSnoop , At a glance it looks fine (besides some files that are not supposed to be commited). However it has a lot of overlap with a system I was already planning on making soon. So I'll most likely just make sure it has feature parity with the things ya added as it doesn't add much work. Soon I plan on integrating Blender parsing for resource dependencies which effectively requires similar logic but a bit more complicated.

Can't say when I'll be creating that version, since its hard finding a free weekend. But I hope to do it at least this month.

For now Ill keep your PR open if anyone wants to find it, and close it when feature parity is reached.

[LogicReinc]

Most of these have been implemented in V1.1.5, due to business trip this took longer than expected. If you are missing anything else let me know, creating an issue or something.