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What shall we work on next?

This is an open invitation to all our wonderful users to help us decide how to develop Crowdrender. We're working towards releasing a beta, but we need your help!!

We'd like you to comment and vote on this thread, here's how.

If you have used Crowdrender, and don't yet use it for your real projects, tell us what we need to do to make our software good enough for you to use for real work. Write a comment below that explains what features you need or problems you face that need to be worked on.

If you see a comment that you agree with, like it and please also expand on it by replying to that comment. This helps us tell which issues are important to everyone!

We'll use what you tell us to help us decide what to work on next. From now on, we'll be releasing frequently, with smaller updates so you can get what you need much faster.

Thanks to everyone for taking part, we can't wait to see what you post :)

80 comments

80 Comments

barkhouse.c4

Nov 07, 2022

Crowd Bakery... rendering is fine (cycles (eevee doesn't work for me)

but Physics sim baking still takes forever because it is single threaded.

I would like to spin up multiple CR-docker instances on my dual Xeon server... that way would at least see more than 2/56 hyperthread cores in use...

James Crowther

Nov 07, 2022

Replying to

Ahhh, I see, was answering your other thread with a question about if you were interested in physics baking vs cycles baking.

One question, if physics sim baking is single thread, would imagine this would be faster to bake on a machine with a v high freq vs a xeon which are usually known for high core count and lower freq, unless I am missing something here?

chameleonscales

Jul 24, 2022

Not sure Blender can give this kind of low-level access to an add-on but if possible, a "Join render when ready" option could be a true time saver.

The other day I had trouble syncing my machines and it ended up taking more time than if I just rendered locally.

It would be amazing if there was a possibility to start a render even if not all machines are synced and whenever they are, they would take part of the remaining area to render.

chameleonscales

Jul 25, 2022

Replying to

Sounds amazing! And yes I'm doing single frame renders only. I was planning on joining back the fund support so I'll do that soon and try this out. Is this feature beta-testable already?

James Crowther

Jul 25, 2022

Replying to

The current prototype is V0.5.0 and supports only frame splitting, so animation rendering for the moment. I am actively developing the new tile splitting feature and expect to have it ready in one to two months for subs with the exclusive content perk (so $10 and up) to start using and providing feedback.

James Crowther

Nov 18, 2022

Replying to

Hi @chameleonscales :) V0.6.0 just got released, it now supports joining a render (even a single frame render) when ready, plus there's a whole ton of other stuff we've done like frame splitting, support for having multiple Blender projects open at the same time (and you can render from each of them), plus fixes for things like Autosave not working in Blender with the addon running.

chameleonscales

Jul 12, 2022

Hi James, it's been a while but I'm back on using CrowdRender! Just posted in General questions btw.

To me the most useful next feature would be support for all linked libraries. So if a path only exists in the client machine, CR would generate a new path on the server machines, upload the files there recursively and modify the blend files to change where libraries point to. This would enable a non-destructive workflow on the client. I assume it's not an easy one since it requires to recursively modify blend files on the server machines, but I'd like to know what you think of it in terms of feasibility and possible limitations.

Cheers!

chameleonscales

Jul 24, 2022

Replying to

I see. So we ended up setting up a directory on our NAS where we put all the project-specific libraries, so we don't have to pack anything anymore.

James Crowther

Jul 24, 2022

Replying to

Yeah, this is the best way to handle things. Also modern operating systems should cache files locally up to a certain limit of storage which means frequently accessed files from the NAS should not be pulled for every render, only when they're out of date or they've been emptied from the cache.

Having a centralised repository of assets that is available to each node at the same absolute path is the best setup in terms of flexibility and cost in my opinion. So good choice!

Just remember, if you change a reference in your scene to any external files, you'll need to Resync your project using the "Resync" button on the crowdrender panel in Blender's render properties. This is because we currently do NOT track references to external files. That is a bug to be fixed. @Jeremy Folland is working on a complete refresh of the sync system that is due to drop later this year.

Once that upgrade is done we'll be looking at properly tracking all data, including external refs so that you won't have to do a full resync if you change a reference to an external file.

Hope that helps!

chameleonscales

Jul 25, 2022

Replying to

That sounds awesome, thanks!

Fredrik

May 03, 2022

Step 1 - Needed implementation. Viewport Shading button is gone, would be great if there was a setting like "use local computer for Viewport Shading" and settings for what HW type to use, like Optix, Cuda, Metal and so on.

Steg 2 - Would be great !! Make is so that the tiles rendered on the CrowdRender network was sent back as soon as they were done. And maybe make the tiles small, and we have a competitor to Cinema 4Ds Team Render. Step 3. This is the big one, the dream one, the üiber one, that would very much put you guys at the centre of the map. Make it so that you can use an IPR or Viewport Shading with the power of CrowdRender.

ginanjar primayoga

Mar 18, 2022

Hi James, maybe crowd render that works with external file..... that's gona be awesome....cheers :)

James Crowther

Mar 28, 2022

Replying to

Thanks @ginanjar primayoga ! Great to know that, when you say, external file, are you referring to any external files, or particular ones like textures, HDRIs, simulation cache?

lendoublet

Sep 17, 2021

Yes, absolutely! Distributing via buckets rather than a percentage of the frame would be fantastic. I'm trying to get our organisation to switch to using blender in production but having a network rendering solution is crucial to being viable.

We currently use vray on another software which works reasonably well and uses the bucket allocation method. I thought this was standard so it took me a while to get the method currently used which I think (sorry guys) is not as effective. Though much better than manual rendering on each machine! I would be so happy for this to be implemented.

James Crowther

Sep 30, 2021

Replying to

@lendoublet Hi len,

Good news, we're definitely going to include frame splitting and I am working on a new version V0.5.0 which will at least make it possible to retry failed frames and let you troubleshoot and add back machines. The road map for V0.5.0 doesn't include frame splitting yet, but if V0.5.0 turns out to be successful (there is a lot of refactoring going on under the hood), then the next feature update, V0.6.0 should be able to offer frame splitting.

We're going to tackle what you've asked for and will get there, taking it one feature at t time though as each one requires quite a bit of engineering and testing to get right.

lendoublet

May 04, 2022

Replying to

@James Crowther Really pleased to hear that, looking forward to being able to use Crowdrender when this comes out.

James Crowther

Nov 18, 2022

Replying to

Hi Len, been a while since you posted this, but just letting you know we've released V0.6.0 which has a similar implementation to what you described as buckets. The buckets are flexible in their size, which can change, but, a still image is broken into multiple buckets and each node will render many buckets of that image until the entire image is done.

TechBros ITA

Apr 04, 2021

why one of my pcs utilizes only 28% of the cpu? only with crowd render

James Crowther

Jun 16, 2021

Replying to

Hi there,

Ok, not really sure of the context of your question here, are you saying that its only using 28% of the CPU while rendering, or when just idle?

Kevin Wright

Nov 16, 2020

Better sync.

I'd like to be able to specify a "root folder" for each node, correlating to a mounted drive, or cloud storage of some form, where all paths to blend files, textures, etc. are always the same on each node relative to that root.

I already have a shared asset library of models and textures that I use across multiple scenes, having to pack these into each and every blend file is insanely wasteful both in terms of storage usage and sync times.

ericspeer70

Oct 29, 2020

Hello everyone.😎

I would like to raise the previous idea of each connected computer doing its own frame during animations.

Similar to the 32 slices or nodes presented for an individual image, but in this case for frames of animation.

I have seen previous discussion of this, and I am wondering how close this is to being realized?

Thanks to the whole blender community, and special thanks to the CrowdRender crew.

We love you, E:)😍

James Crowther

Nov 09, 2020

Replying to

Thanks Eric! We hear you man, this is definitely going to be a thing, there's a new design being worked on that will allow each computer to request an entire frame to work on.

Right now we're working on keeping up with blender's changes, each new version they bring out has to be checked for changes and patches made, as well as bugs people report, so we're dividing our time quite a bit between tasks. But progress is being made.

James Crowther

Nov 18, 2022

Replying to

Hi Eric, done! We've released V0.6.0 which now has this as the default for rendering an animation in blender.

Johannes Koukkari

Sep 21, 2020

Great work, can't wait to see this grow. Here's few suggestions: 1.clear way to "turn on/off" CrowdRender so it doesn't do stuff in the background. I don't know if it does or not. Maybe that's the problem. So on-off-switch. 2.an option to render "one frame per computer", so that two computers don't work on the same one frame (For animations this would prove better since other computers wont have to wait for the slowest one to finish, though I'm only guessing) 3.clear, under 5 minute tutorial on how to set things up quick. (including installation on each pc, how to search ip and device name, which settings to use..) I guess these have been mentioned before but I wanted to give hobbyist blenderer's perspective on what I'd like to see. Cheers!

James Crowther

Nov 18, 2022

Replying to

Hi Johannes,

You can now more easily use the enable/disable checkbox in Blender/s preferences / addons tab to do this, we've changed how the addon runs, so this should work.
Also done!
Will work on that!

V0.6.0 is the latest release that has 1, 2 dealt with

Fredrik

Sep 07, 2020

Centralized upload and download server/point, now it looks like it upload and download to each "slave" ? I have bad internet at home an it would be awesome to slim down the internet need.

James Crowther

Sep 08, 2020

Replying to

Hi Fredrik, yep, we're going to redesign the addon to upload once, and then replicate the data to all cloud nodes you have active. This will save a lot of bandwidth.

Fredrik

Sep 09, 2020

Replying to

Thanks @James Crowther, that will be a very nice feature / bandwidth saver.

Fredrik

Sep 03, 2020

Ability to connect to render slaves over internet. Like from home to the office. Bonus if it would work as Teamviewer,, so no wierd ports needs to be open and such.

James Crowther

Aug 26, 2020

Hey @Mike B and @Eddy :D, we're releasing the next version of Crowdrender, hopefully next week, we'll have full support for Optix, I recently was able to test this on a new PC we built, see https://www.instagram.com/p/CEWB-4nDjsb/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

Mike B

Jun 29, 2020

is there now an official version which supports optix via network?

Eddy

Jun 05, 2020

So is there now an official version which supports optix via network?

aladorus

Mar 23, 2020

As an IT admin I would love the ability to run this as a service. There would be a central management app on a server we could setup on the network. The service on each client would be setup to report back to the management server by IP or Computer Name. The management app would have a queue of blender jobs. The management app would be responsible for distributing frames to all the computers connected. Since networks like these have many computers that are used by users, the management app could be set to only send jobs between two times. It would also be responsible for each frame getting done. If a computer fails to do a frame, that frame could be resent out to another computer on the network. Computers may even drop off the network only to appear again later. It would be nice if the management app could quarry the client to see if it is idle or being used by a user. If no one is logged in, and it is withing the time set by the admin, the management app could add that client to the list of available pc's and start sending jobs to it. Email notifications would be nice to have but not needed.

John Rex

Dec 22, 2019

Have you tought about creating some sort of rendering nodes market? I mean, many people have powerful hardware that can be used for rendering by other people, but they don't want to share their computers with strangers for free. It would be great to be able to rent out computers in public cloud, where other people could get them for rendering using your system. For 3D artists it would be great too, because it should lower costs and make cloud much bigger and more accessible for all.

mattia.zoratti

Nov 28, 2019

Hi there! I've just tried the optix version of the addon.. there are some strange behaviours.. first of all, I can always select optix even if my second computer doesn't have it. Then, if I right click on the new node, I have some blender options, unrelated with the addon which is weird. But above all, the render has been done 100% by the optix machine, while the slower machine set to cpu render continued rendering even after the frame was completed.. I also tried to launch the frame render a second time and again was completed 100% only by the faster machine, while the status of the second slower one was still stuck at "7%" of the previous render. I tried to manually set the load balancing setting "1" for the slower machine, still the same behaviour, but now the frame was empty. The last weird thing I want to point out is that when it renders, it switches render engine from Cycles to an empty one. Once the render is finished, it goes back to Cycles.

mattia.zoratti

Nov 28, 2019

I will!

mattia.zoratti

Nov 28, 2019

I'll go to sleep now, it's 1 a.m. here! I'll try the build tomorrow! Thanks!

mattia.zoratti

Nov 28, 2019

Don't worry, I just want to be able to set up a small Blender render farm with my PCs in my house.

mattia.zoratti

Nov 28, 2019

I promise I won't :) How will you send it?

mattia.zoratti

Nov 28, 2019

Cool! Can I try the new build?

mattia.zoratti

Nov 28, 2019

For Hybrid rendering you mean GPU + CPU? No, it's not possible. If you look at the first screenshot, when you select an Optix device, there's no option for adding CPU computing.

James Crowther

Nov 27, 2019

Ok, time to get excited!! Optix is in a build already!!

James Crowther

Nov 27, 2019

Sure thing, one more question for you, can you do hybrid rendering in cycles when using optix as the device? What does your settings in blender's preferences look like if you do? Can you post me a quick screen shot?

mattia.zoratti

Nov 27, 2019

You can write me at [email protected]

mattia.zoratti

Nov 27, 2019

Ok! Let me know when I can try a version with Optix support of your addon!

mattia.zoratti

Nov 27, 2019

I have another suggestion, anyway.. rendering in Blender is way faster if Blender itself is not running, I mean, when you only have the console with all the written data.. is there a way you could implement a similar feature?