RenderFarm¶

The Renderfarm interface has changed in Guerilla 2.0. The Renderfarm plug-ins must be modified to work with Guerilla 2.0:
In Guerilla 1.x, the plug-in crafted its job like that : guerilla.."/lua '"..job:getscriptfile (frame).."'"
In Guerilla 2.x, the plug-in crafts its job like that : fs.expand (job:getcommandline (frame))

This method is called by Guerilla when the user renders frames on the render farm.

The first argument is a list of jobs to execute in order. A job can be either a preprocess (such as baking a shadowmap once for a sequence of frames), a frame process (rendering frames) or a postprocess (building a movie of final frames.)

Submitted jobs can dependent on one another. It is the minimum requirement for a job scheduler to implement dependencies. For instance, a frame job may be dependent on a shadowmap baking, and eventually the final movie job is dependent on the rendering of the frame job.

A job is a simple Lua task containing the following data:

• number JobId: a unique integer id
• string Type: "frame", "pre" or "post"
• boolean Array: the job is an array of frames
• table Dependencies: the list of job ids this job is dependent on
• string Script: the template path of the Lua job script to execute at each frame
• string Name: the template name of the job

Additionally, jobs contain the following methods:

• string getscriptname (number frame): get the actual name of the job for a given frame
• string getcommandline (number frame): returns the job command line in a string, like '"$(GUERILLA)/lua" "job.lua" "--frame=1"'. Every command line arguments are quoted. Some arguments may contain environment variables like $(GUERILLA). Those variables must be expanded before to run the command. This command line must be executed in the options.JobsDirectory directory.
• table getcommandargs (number frame): returns the job command line arguments in a table, like {"$(GUERILLA)/lua", "job.lua", "--frame=1"}. The first argument is the path of the application to run. Each entry of the table in an unquoted command line argument. Some arguments may contain environment variables like $(GUERILLA). Those variables must be expanded before to run the command. This command line must be executed in the options.JobsDirectory directory

The second argument is a table of options. Options are set either by Guerilla or by the caller of the render function. Usual options are:

• string Name: a human readable name for the jobs to submit, default to the project name
• string FrameRange: the list of frames to render, see rangetonumbers function for details on the format of the string
• string ProjectDirectory: the directory of the current project, default to "$(SCENE_PATH)"
• string JobsDirectory: the directory where job scripts are written, default to "$(JOBS)"
• string RibsDirectory: the directory where rib files are written, default to "$(RIBS)"

A pseudocode RenderFarm implementation looks like:

-- Subclass RenderFarm
class ("MyFarm", "RenderFarm")

-- Construct MyFarm
function MyFarm:construct ()
    LocalPlug ("MyFarmSettings", self, 0, types.string, "")
    LocalPlug ("MyFarmOtherSettings", self, 0, types.int{min=10,max=20}, 15)
end

-- Generate the property template for MyFarm
function MyFarm:gettemplate ()
    return {"MyFarm",
        {
            { "Settings", self.MyFarmSettings },
            { "Other Settings", self.MyFarmOtherSettings },
        }
    }
end

-- Submit jobs to MyFarm
function MyFarm:submit (jobs, options)
-- Submit jobs to MyFarm
    local    frames = rangetonumbers (options.FrameRange)
    local    guerilla = "/usr/local/guerilla"
    -- A simple way to submit jobs is to submit them in order, and make sure
    -- the next job waits for the previous to finish
    for k, job in ipairs (jobs) do
        print ("Submit job "..job.Name)
        if job.Array then
            -- execute all frames on this job
            -- TODO: replace this with your own scheduler submission command!
            for k, frame in ipairs (frames) do
                lfs.chdir (fs.expand (options.JobsDirectory))
                os.execute ("echo running "..job:getscriptname (frame))
                os.execute (fs.expand (job:getcommandline (frame)))
            end
        else
            -- execute this single job
            -- TODO: replace this with your own scheduler submission command!
            lfs.chdir (fs.expand (options.JobsDirectory))
            os.execute ("echo running "..job:getscriptname (1))
            os.execute (fs.expand (job:getcommandline (1)))
        end
    end
end


The Renderfarm.declare function registers a new connection to a render farm system. You must call this function with an instance of a RenderFarm derivated class so Guerilla can edit the render farm properties and connect to it when submitting jobs.