Re: Fork of original Loki and some Updated features

[Rodney Wild]

As I have mentioned a while back I have a developer working on the code adding some new features and fixing some broken features which we will be contributing back to the community via Github fork. I will post an updated list of stuff that has been fixed and added here and a link to the project with compiled Jars and Source when we have posted it.

First we've fixed file transfer to work properly from grunt to master
Added multi-file transfer functional, to send all rendered files from grunt to master (if a blender project creates multiple files for later compositing this was broken before, now its fixed)
added functional to accept and work with archive of blend files
added support for TIFF, JPEG, TGA, and RAWTGA formats (in tile function)
added in the AddJobForm possibility to use command line arguments (allows the running of autoexec scripts in blender as well as adding override command line commands)
The last include and functional for this formats, and for tile rendering
Added possibility to use stepped rendering
Was done a lot of refactoring
Rethought file system for master and grunt, to avoid conflicts of files, especially when master and grunt runs on the same machine
Was excluded use of MD5 instead of original file names
This MD5, doesn't works properly first, because sending the same file from master to grunt, on the same machine, leads to filling up the log file, with a lot of error informations
CPU Usage
Add logic to terminate grunt, if its version differs from the master;
Project migrated to Maven.

note: code and jar will be contributed in an as is where is condition and thre will be no warranty or liability on our part if you choose to use the code or jar.

Rodney Wild
RayOLightMedia

[Rodney Wild]

Beta version (just the jar), do not use in production: https://cloud.myinkbooks.com/s/0runxuvzOfOXyHi

note: code and jar will be contributed in an as is where is condition and thre will be no warranty or liability on our part if you choose to use the code or jar. Link only works until April 20, 2018.

In the next few weeks I will also release the source.

[Rei]

Thank you Rodney, I gave it a test with a large single frame render tiled into 400 tiles. At tile 182 of 400 it created a zero bite png and is displaying a an extra frame under "running", there are 2 grunts and it's displaying running as 3, as though a ghost grunt. In the Job Details it only says Running, but continuing to render later frames.
Not sure how to force it to restart that particular tile. I tried restarting, deleting the frame png, but it's stuck. It's a 5 day render and currently on day 4. I really wanted to see how it would hold up to handling a large tiled frame.
Amazing work overall and it seems to do a great job while it works, perhaps what broke it was me when I turned the master&grunt into just master during the day so I can work on it. We'll see what happens when it reaches the final frame, since it's set to output EXR but so far all I see are PNGs.
Thanks again for sharing.

[Rodney Wild]

Can you post a screen capture (or send me one in an private message)? As per the above features list, EXR has not been added to the tile function (it wasn't in the orginal either, just png)

    added support for TIFF, JPEG, TGA, and RAWTGA formats (in tile function)

We might add it at some point, but there are other features I need to have added before then. In order to add EXR to the tiled function and entire library for EXR handling would need to be writen as the one library they have out there for java does not work / does not work well. You can still use EXR in non-tiled mode though.

FYI - because you can now submit compressed zip files to the master linked resouce files (multiple blend files along with other files (textures, etc)) now also work. They need to use relative file paths though. I have tested this feature via downloading the splash279.zip file from the blender website and adding it on the master and it worked well but you need to turn on autorun scripts in the preferences and make sure it is checked when submitting the job.

Once everyone has had a chance to try the new version I would welcome some comments on new features people would like to see (I can't garentee that they will get added but I will do my best). The whole reason for doing this was so that I could add base features that really needed to be in the product.

I would like to note, I have used a basic version of the jar file where we fixed the broken return of files to the master and rendered a trailer for our children's cartoon. 1.30 min x 2900 frames at 1080p. We ended up render the project almost twice due to some erorrs (linked files not working) we did not find until we had almost rendered the full trailer.

[Rodney Wild]

updated Jar file ver R0.7.3.013: https://cloud.myinkbooks.com/s/h6DdH63AfxVSjs1

If you are interested in looking at some stuff we have rendered with the project, look on our sleepy bunny facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SleepyBunny2/

[Rodney Wild]

Updated jar file R0.7.3.014: https://cloud.myinkbooks.com/s/zxfohezUcK9Caxn

We are in the stages of finalization before we post it on github. I will post a link here when done.

[Rodney Wild]

Github Source: https://github.com/Michael1001/loki-render

[Oksana Frolova]

Interesting take on the updated features in the fork of the original Loki! I’ve also explored some of these updates and found them really useful