CRM - Constellation Render Manager

I used to remember when me and my friends back in university, We have been faced with one huge stage during our last finals semester.

Rendering!

Aside from the long rendering time we have to render farm our shot manually across the computer lab. We have to copy the project file, set the frame range manually, and batch render it on every computer which is obviously a very tedious task.

The solution turn out to be a render manager software which can help you handle and distribute render job across networked computer. However, render manager software can be very costly and I wonder if we can make one ourselves.

The answer came through after I work for 4 months in Jakarta. I saw our studio render manager was overloaded and after some thought, I decided to develop our own in-house render manager called Constellation Render Manager (CRM).

CRM consist of 4 core element. The server, client, submitter, and the controller. Each of this component will work individually on each computer but share one configuration and network in order to work.

First one is the CRM server console which will distribute render job and control the which job run on which client. I've run the server for one month and it has shown a very robust reliability without the needs of restarting it.

CRM Server

The next on is the client. The client shown here is specifically engineered to render job for Autodesk Maya. However, I saw that it can expanded to other software in the near future.

CRM Client

Here is the CRM submitter engineered for built in Maya. We can decide how much frame each client will render in Block Divider section while you can cross check the Render Layer that is going to be submitted.

CRM Submitter

The last one and the most crucial part on every render manager is the controller to see the progress on each job, check client status, and to manipulate submitted job.

CRM Controller

This simple render manager has been tested and used to render heavy scene file for the last one month in the studio I work now without significance issues. CRM has performed fast, simple, and reliable.

I will develop CRM more in the near future to be able to handle more software, more intelligence, and even more reliable.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a nice day.

TaskMan - Job Management for Studio

It has been awhile since the last time I update my animation blog here so today I got some update and new things to share.

I'm currently working as Technical Animator / Artist in MNC Animation Jakarta responsible for developing pipeline software following my manager guideline, tools for the artists (animator, modeler, compositor, and VFX), and as supporting artist where needed (mostly in render).

The first day I arrived in MNC the Head Producer told me that he require a tools (preferably online) to monitor work progress both in-source and out-source. This tools will work as tool to help him make a decision on every project.

Answering to his challenge, I utilize PHP, MySQL, Javascript, and chrome HTML 5 to create a simple job tracking website. The TaskMan.

Login page of the Task Manager

I tried to create this website to ease out the headache of tracking an asset or job manually during the production. Therefore, I've made the layout simple and put some small feature inside it.

The first one is the dashboard. Here everybody can see the status of all the project they currently working at while tracking a job they have been assigned to. Notice the big percentage on the center right side, its the amount of job percentage that has been assigned to you so as long as it show 100%, you are safe.

Dashboard of the TaskMan

The following is My Task page where you can see all the job that has been assigned to you, upload an image, or simply put a notes and quick notes in it to be seen by other department (render, asset, or coordinator).

My Task

Here is the heart of the entire site, The Task manager. In this page, you can manipulate each ticket such as the assigned artist, bid hour, deadline, supervisor, notes, etc while the site will assist you on every change you make.

Task Manager

The next one is the overseer page. This page is reserved for an account with clearance A and B (Team lead or supervisor). Here, the supervisor can check all job supervised by them and decide whether to approve it or give a revise back to the assigned artist.

Overseer

The last one is the episode registration page. Aside the time consuming manual task entry, here I've designed the page to read a .ecf an MNC in house file containing each episode information file (sequence, shot, frame range, etc) and input it to the TaskMan database automatically.

Register Episode

These are all the feature I've made to answer our Producer first challenge to avoid clutter in our studio production and to prepare ourselves when working with outsource studio. I really hope in the near future I can develop the website to be capable of handling more complex pipeline and integrate it to our production software.

I'm currently preparing another identical website to be used as trial so you can come and experience the website directly.

Thank you for reading and hope you have a nice day.