FIFO / Priority-Ordered Queue

Render Manager Wishlist & Feature Requests
#1

While the load-balancing queue is very nice with a large render farm, for smaller farms it may be more useful to complete jobs one-at-a-time. Eg, it may be better for an upcoming draft submission to have a few shots fully rendered than many shots partially rendered.

It would be nice to have the option to process the queue one job at a time, in user-defined order a-la Backburner or other queue managers. This can sort-of be achieved by setting all jobs to HIGH priority, however once submitted I don’t think their position in the queue cannot be adjusted, and more granular prioritization and re-ordering would be very useful.

#2

Hi JoshH,

It is absolutely doable by using the feature called “Dependencies”.
Once you create a job you can define dependent job(s). You have two options here. If you select dependent job(s) then the Nodes will start the new job once the dependent job(s) starts. If you tick the “Strict” option (at the left), then the new job will start when the dependent job(s) finishes.
For more info please check the relevant tutorial over here: https://youtu.be/KJaeuuQhq0I?t=99
If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.
Cheers,
Attila

#3

Attila,

I did notice that, but when dealing with a large number of jobs it’s inconvenient to have to set dependencies on all of them. It also makes it unclear what jobs truly do depend on others, say for GI Prepasses.

There’s still the issue of not being able to re-order the queue, which is admittedly not a problem when doing the default load-balancing. I suppose you could also do this via dependencies, but then the Jobs view won’t give you a good idea of which jobs will be rendering next and further changing the order will become more and more confusing.

The other option that I see is to suspend and activate jobs in the order you want them to render, but that means someone has to be monitoring the queue at all times.

I know that this isn’t what the Render Manager is currently designed for, but I think that the option to manage queues this way would be a really good thing for the software. There’s so much that it already does so well, like the plugin dependency management and the UX across the board, and something like this could round it out very nicely!

Best,
-Josh

No way to render Multi-Frame Incremental GI pass (VRay, Max)[solved]
#4

Thank you JoshH for the detailed feedback, your insight is very valuable for us!
We have been working on the new version of the Render Manager which will be very much different. There will be a lot of UI/UX improvements and many functions will be aligned to the needs of the users. Your comments are noted and we keep them in mind.
If you have any other suggestions, just let me know. Stay tuned until the next version will come.

Best regards,

Attila

#5

Of course, we’re looking forward to seeing how the Pulze software changes and improves! As I said, there’s already a lot about it that we love.

Best,
-Josh

#6

Thanks for the kind words! :slight_smile:
We try hard to make it as streamlined as possible. And in this way every feedback counts.