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LogicReinc / LogicReinc.BlendFarm

A stand-alone Blender Network Renderer
GNU General Public License v3.0
412 stars 35 forks source link

External data: vidoes/image sequences #87

Open oblivian opened 8 months ago

oblivian commented 8 months ago

Hey,

I am checking out this very promising render farm solution, but I can't make it render external (unpackable) data, like videos and image sequences. Other farms allows for this by letting me create a ZIP file and embed all assets and the blend file and use relative (to the blend file) paths.

Is this possible with BlendFarm?

Thanks!

LogicReinc commented 8 months ago

This has actually been a similar feature planned for a long time, and a lot of work for this is effectively already done. But due to work and busy schedule, I have not really had the time to finish it.

Blendfarm feature for relative resources There is a different way to do it within BlendFarm though using "Networked paths", which effectively involve pointing to a network share on the pc from which the blend file originates, and it allows the render nodes to retrieve relative files directly from that network share. This requires more setup from your side of course, and isn't ideal..

Planned The planned feature however is distinct from this, where it requires no work from you besides switching a toggle, and it will automatically sync all required files to the render node. Its mostly already planned out, the problems that need to be solved are effectively solved, they just need to be implemented. I have no clue when I'll actually get to finish it though.

Zip solution Uploading a zip file is a significantly simpler solution from a software perspective, but requires user involvement, which is what I want to avoid. It might be something I could add without much effort, though at that point it would be more useful to work on the above solution. But I suspect I'll still be busy this month with work.

Note that nothing stops you from putting the required files on the render nodes yourself at the moment, but I assume this is not what you mean, and its inconvenient, but it is an option.

oblivian commented 8 months ago

OK, sounds good. 👍 I really like your philosophy around this, i.e. put all the complexity under the hood and leave out all the elaborate hassle most other solutions come with. And thanks for the manually copy the required files to each node. Elaborate, but a working workaround until you get to implement the auto sync feature.

Looking forward to the next iterations!

Thanks!