[Bf-funboard] Using Network Renderer from Within Blender

[Douglas Bischoff]

Hello, all!

Apologies for the cross-post, but the discussion is relevant in two 
different groups.

While some of us are working on the Network Render system, it would be 
helpful to discuss how Blender should communicate with the Broker 
program.

Some ideas:
1) No Communication - You save your .blend file, and then go to the OS 
to copy the file to a hotfolder for Network Rendering. (Current System, 
very non-user friendly)

2) Behind the Scenes Copy - Create a default path in the Blender User 
Prefs the user can "point" to the hotfolder. When "Use Render Daemon" 
is selected for a particular scene in an Anim, pressing "Anim" saves a 
copy of the current .blend file with that scene marked for Network 
Rendering to the specified hotfolder. (Simple to Implement, not 
terribly user friendly)

3) Manual IP Copy - Create a location in Blender's User Prefs that 
allows entry of an IP address and Port that points to the Broker to 
use. Pressing "Anim" on a renderd enabled scene causes Blender to open 
communication with the broker at that IP address & port, then send a 
copy of the open .blend file over that connection as a background 
thread, then provide a quick status message of "file sent, rendering 
begun." (Still relatively simple to Implement, but not very user 
friendly. Better than 2, IMO)

4) Auto IP Copy - As in #3, but in the User Prefs pane there would be, 
in addition to manually typing the IP ADdress & Port a "scan for 
Broker" button. This would identify the current system's IP address & 
subnet mask, then scan the rest of the subnet over a predefined range 
of ports (which would match the default port setup for the broker) to 
locate a broker. A renderd, if found first, would report "this is my 
broker" to speed the process. Then the rest of the system operates as 
per #3 above. (Slightly harder to implement, becoming pretty user 
friendly.)

5) RenderD GUI in Blender - Provide a screen type which is specifically 
built to control Brokers & RenderD's. This could be a coded window 
type, or (probably better) when the ability to run & maintain several 
Python scripts with GUI's at once is ready, provide a scene in the 
default .blend file which has a pre-loaded (not running... just loaded 
& ready) GUI setup which will find brokers, renderd's, etc. as in 4 
above, and permit manual control through the Blender window. (Best by 
far, but work needs to be done by the Python crew before this will 
work, but it is without a doubt most user friendly.)

Commentary welcome,

-Bish