Separate render manager for Blender (Is it even possible?)
Hello guys. I would like to propose a separate render manager for blender. I am not too familiar with the technicalities of rendering although I am aware that there is a certain capacity that your cpu can only handle especially when multitasking. What I am not very sure of is does this proposal make sense or this is not even possible at all?
The feature works similar to torrent download manager softwares where you will have the ability to render in the background. This also will have its own executable application where you don't have to open another blender software to manage your renders. What I am not sure is does the renderer need almost the entire capacity of blender to be able to run and render the output.
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Main features:
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CPU/GPU performance priority settings for the render manager when running on background.
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Multirendering ability. The download manager can render multiple files from different blend files.
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Can show which is currently rendering and which is pending. The percentage of completion is also included.
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Render pause
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Notifications when a render is complete/ Notifications for incomplete or renders with errors.
11 Comments
It requires quite a bit of tech-savvy, but maybe you should look into flamenco which is what the Blender Animation Studio uses to manage their renders, along with Attract to manage their shots/sequences/production.
An option would be B-renderon available in blender market and it checks a few points from your post. I've been using it for 6 months and it's great!{attachment Annotation_2019-09-30_110102png}
This would be a nice feature to have, but as far as blender actually implementing this I would doubt it.
Currently if you really need this, there are separate render managers you can download (look up render farm managers, and just use it with 1 machine), or the Command line which I personally use.
* @Zach Hixson * You have a point. Maybe this is not that necessary to everyone. When it comes to render farm I mainly use sheepit.
* @johnpdelacruz26 * What I meant with the render farm is that many people have their own render farms, and there are plenty of 3rd party GUIs meant for managing them. If you used one of those, but only used it with one machine, it would basically do what you are after.
To be clear, are you trying to use Blender on one project while also rendering a separate project?
* @Jason van Gumster * Yes. That is part of what I mean but also when blender is not in use. What I am trying to ask is, would making a separate executable application for blender make sense or it would just be the same with opening blender (the main program itself). I am not entirely sure but maybe this would be better perfromance wise? It is like a utorrent tray icon which runs in the background but with multiple render projects running/pending. Works exactly like a render manager would do.
* @johnpdelacruz26 * Technically speaking, it's already possible using the command line. If you wanted to wrap a GUI around that, I'd say that would be a separate project than something built into Blender. Though, with an add-on, you could easily give Blender the ability to queue up a render on that render manager. This is basically what a number of renderfarm packages do.
* @Jason van Gumster * I see. That is also what I am currently using. Thanks for the info.
In Blender 2.81
Preferences - Interface - Temporary Windows
you can select "Render in" New Window.
* @Rosario Rosato * Would this require opening blender? One feature I would like foe blender to have is to have a render manager which runs at the background. Where you can adjust how much cpu perfermance it would use. If you have used Utorrent you might know what I mean. Mainly just a broad idea of how a downlaod manager works.