JM - Batch Simulations
A very interesting, but maybe unknown, field of application for RealFlow's “Job Manager” is batch simulations. You might perhaps have run into situation already where you wanted to simulate different versions of a scene over night or the weekend, but simply did not know how to batch-simulate these projects without sending them to RealFlow manually.
Scripting is, of course, one method and a program that manages this task can be created with just a few lines of code. For a single computer this can also be a very good option, but what if you want to use all existing RealFlow nodes in your network? This is something that is not so easy to do with scripting. RealFlow's “Job Manager” can handle this for you. You just have to follow a few steps.
Start the “License Manager”, launch the “Job Manager” program, and the “Job Node” applications on the computer(s) you want to use.
Open RealFlow's GUI application and choose Layout > Job Manager.
The web-interface now shows you all available “Job Nodes” with information about IP, number of threads, operating system etc.
If not already done, open the first project you want to simulate.
Click on the “Send to job manager” button to trigger the simulation (see image below).
Repeat this process for the remaining simulations.
If everything is correct the “Job Nodes” will start to simulate immediately. The jobs can be seen in the web-interface again. Once a RealFlow Node has finished a project, it will go on with the next job. Another advantage of this method is that it is not only possible to simulate different scenes, but you can also send render or preview jobs to your RealFlow Nodes. The workflow is exactly the same as described above. All you have to do is to press the “Send preview to job manager” button instead:
Batch simulations with the “Job Manager” are failsafe: even if one node is crashing or kicked off the network for whatever reason, the other nodes will continue simulating and processing the remaining jobs. With a scripted solution, RealFlow will simply stop if there is a problem or a crash. The “Job Manager's” web interface also gives you constantly updated information about the current progress. If you have remote access to the computer with the “Job Manager” then it is even possible to monitor the system's health via a mobile device, e.g. a smartphone or a tablet computer.