On my growing list of Maxscripts and Tools to write is a request to integrate backburner with our company’s internal database so that they can keep a track of how many renders are done and how much time is spent rendering.
Has anyone ever set anything up like this or know how to do so?
I collect that data from the .xml documents on the backburner server when a job completes. I also have a Ghz Power factor associated with each server, as we’ve different computers in our render farm, to normalize that render time to what we call a “Farm Hour”. Defined by what our farm can render at night, with all the user boxes logged in, in one hour.
This data is written to a data file found in each project folder and is accessed through our render management software. Before submittal of a pass, in the submittal box I have an estimated render time displayed, which animators can e-mail to our Animation Sup during render crunches so he can prioritize…
I haven’t quite gotten to making “Render King” tool, which would do this for the A.S. and give the overall picture of a project, but it’s in the coding queue…
Attached are two screen shots from Scene Pimp, our render management package, that shows the previous renders data displayed for the animator from the scene list and at submittal time…