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?

That sounds awesome, thanks!

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.

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.

I think I found a use for it : You can sync your machines while rendering locally, so that's actually neat.

Thanks for those clarifications! Note: we work on Linux, not Windows, so the error message when disabling CrowdRender may have a different cause than what you mentioned. I pasted the full message in this new topic.

Very good points! Note : Just a warning sign alone, in the list of connected machines, instead of the current "Synced" (which doesn't necessarily mean all libraries will be found and rendered) would already save a lot of bad surprises and wasted render time, so it would be a great step forward. If it is possible, then to go even further: In my job, we centralize all the libraries that are not project-specific (e.g. assets that can be reused). However, we do have some project-specific libraries, like one-off assets. Those we do not centralize but keep in the local machine where this project is being worked on. So when using CrowdRender, these are the ones we have to make fully local in the main blend file before rendering, which is where the workflow gets less dynamic and inflates the size of the main Blend file. So for those it would be best if Crowd Render could generate new paths on worker machines and upload the libraries there. Of course there is no way for Crowd Render to know why exactly a file can't be found, whether it's because the NAS is wrongly configured or because the file only exists on the client machine. So maybe the best would be a pop-up showing a list of all the problematic paths and asking what to do between ignoring the warning or generating new paths on the worker machines and uploading the non-found libraries there. The way I see it, this pop-up would be accessible through a clickable warning sign next to each connected machine in the list. As for the "out-of-sync" issue you mentioned, I guess we'd have to leave that to the Resync button? Would you agree? Was it clear enough or would you like mockup pictures? Did I still miss something?

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!

Sorry I forgot to reply here. Anyway, forget about “Camera Cropper” and say hello to “Camera Regions”! Tutorial: https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/bafcaa9c-cfc1-4e8e-88c1-c7af39dfd45c Gitlab page: https://gitlab.com/ChameleonScales/camera_regions Blenderartists thread: https://blenderartists.org/t/add-on-camera-regions/682526/42

Thanks. I've acquired a better understanding of the add-on since then and I don't face any more issue with it, so I don't personally need a turorial anymore. I'm not even sure the issues I faced can still happen on the latest version. Thanks for the reply anyway

Woops! I was using relative paths for a library that was sitting in my common server. Using absolute paths solved the issue. Maybe it would be a good thing to have some sort of warning for that in the log, such as adding this line at the end: Sync failed: Are you using relative paths for a remote library? If so, try changing it to an absolute path".

Actually there's no need to give an example, it simply happens with the default cube. Here are the steps: - save the default scene somewhere - close the file and open a new one - delete and purge everything - File > Link > browse to your saved file > Objects > Cube - select the cube in the viewport - Object > Relations > Make Library Override... > Cube - Resync From there, sync fails all the time. Tested on Blender 2.81a and 2.82 beta as of january 29 2020

I made further updates to my Camera cropper add-on and used it at work with Crowd Render and it works pretty good already. If people ask you about the region render feature, feel free to direct them to me for some help on my workaround while you work on a more built-in solution.

I just updated my cropper add-on to 2.8: https://gitlab.com/ChameleonScales/camera-cropper/tree/master More updates and features to come soon.

Hi James, Border Render would be a huge help for me. In my work, using Crowd Render is often pointless since the objects that have to be rendered cover a small part of a very large image (objects inserted in real footage using shadowcatcher), so using Border render allows me to avoid all the empty space which would still take time to render. If I use crowdrender on 5 equally powerful machines, it still takes a lot longer to render than rendering the small region on a single machine. I made this camera cropper add-on a while ago which I need to update to 2.8 but would this approach be of any interest to you? Also maybe I can try and join forces directly in your add-on. I'm not nearly as experienced as you but if you think I can help feel free to ask (I would need pointers on where to look in your code) You can contact me at [email protected]