The popular tool for managing large rendering projects offers increased control, more detailed performance metrics, and better integration with several rendering tools.
PipelineFX has updated Qube, its render farm management software for digital media creators. The company says the improvements focus on increased speed, more granular control over rendering tasks, better metrics, and better control over very large rendering operations.
Qube offers what it calls Smart Farming, defined as the ability to deliver intelligence to production pipelines by providing business-critical insight into render pipelines, maximizing investment in rendering infrastructure and automating manual processes. Qube supports most leading content creation products, and is available on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X operating systems.
Specific improvements include:
Improved GUI performance: Faster browsing and interaction with jobs in the tens of thousands;
Host-based licensing: Maximizes investment in Nuke, Vray, Mental Ray and Render Man licenses;
Per-user and “per-pgrp” running subjobs limit: Prevents a user from using too many resources at once;
Large farm performance optimization: PipelineFX says a customer running a beta version of 6.2 recently rendered 485,680 frames in 24 hours on 600 hosts with a Supervisor load of less than 60 threads;
Dynamic Allocation for Nuke: Loads the application and script once then renders multiple frames without re-load;
Houdini Distributed Simulations support: There is now no need for Hqueue to manage a distributed simulation. Qube can gather a pool of computers, run the simulation, and return the render nodes to the farm without using Hqueue;
Enhanced Shotgun Integration: Render management integrated with production tracking
PipelineFX claims more than 500 customers, including BBC, Cinesite (Europe), Digital Domain, Electronic Arts, General Motors, Herman Miller, Lockheed Martin, Method Studios, NBC, NHK, Pratt University, Procter & Gamble, Rainmaker Entertainment Inc., Reel FX, Smoke & Mirrors, South Park Studios, Starz Entertainment, Technicolor, and Telemundo.
More information: www.pipelinefx.com.
