batch network rendering

[ehilado]

it will be nice if you come out with new release that implement network rendering into the workflow

[ernpchan]

You can already do command line rendering with ASP. Are you talking about Smith Micro including a network rendering controller? Not sure that would be a good use of resources for them since there are already a lot of solutions out there for that.

[Greenlaw]

Unless you have a lot of really long and complex renders, I'm not sure you'll see a dramatic cost/speed benefit like you would with cgi animation network rendering to make it really worthwhile. Most ASP renders, even those with high-res bitmaps and multiple characters, usually render very quickly.

We have an ASP compatible render farm at my work place but most of the time I still render my passes locally because, in the time it takes to distribute all the files to available nodes for rendering, a single machine can often have the scene rendered as quickly--probably quicker if you're competing with other artists also using the farm. (Obviously, your mileage may vary depending on your computers, network speed, etc.)

To be clear, I'm not dismissing the idea of having an easy to setup network render controller--if this feature was available, I'd probably use it at home. Just saying that for most users, since ASP renders are usually so quick, network rendering probably isn't going to make them that much more productive.

Personally, I'd like to see more improvements made to the local Batch Render panel first. In 11.2, many improvements for batch rendering (especially for Layer Comps) but certain parts of the Batch Render Panel are still pretty 'clicky' and unnecessarily repetitive (like when setting up file destinations on the network for different scenes or shows.) The recent improvements* are highly welcome though and I'm sure the developers are continuing to work on this for 12.

*(For example, the recently added Split Selected button for Layer Comps rocks! Just remember to enable Overwrite Existing Files before you click it, otherwise you'll be forced to enable it for each Layer Comp pass individually.)