Smedge 3 ver.2.2.0
Smedge 3 ver.2.2.0 | 3,92 MB
The latest generation of Smedge provides unbeatable power and flexibility combined with incredible stability. All while maintaining the ease of use users have always loved. And soon, combining your Windows, Linux and Mac machines will be a snap with the amazing cross-platform abilities. Far beyond the mere render farm control, the Smedge system is designed to accurately and efficiently distribute absolute anything. If it can be divided up, Smedge can manage it. All Job interface and control is managed as a unique "Product" in the system. You can easily customize and add Products of your own with simple text files, or you can use the Smedge 3 Application Programming Interface to write your own custom Modules for the Smedge system.
Self-Managing Master
The heart of the Smedge 3 system is the highly scalable Master, which automatically expands and releases its use of your computer's resources as it actually needs them, in real time. This is much more efficient than other systems that simply scale with overall number of clients, even though those resources are wasted in periods of low activity. The Master also keeps a real time, disk based backup of everything in the system, and will automatically recover its own data.
Division of Labor
Smedge 3 has a collection of interlocking components that all work together to actually do the work of Smedge. This division of labor makes it possible to add, remove, update or replace any individual component with ease, often without even having to shut down your system. New Job types (called "Products") can be added, some as easily as adding a few lines in a text file. Similarly, all user interaction is through "Shell" programs, which allow you to control any aspect of your system's operation, without interfering with the operation of the Master or the Engines that are doing the work.
Handles Any Render Pipeline
Smedge 3 ships with a large variety of Modules to control most of today's popular animation and compositing tools. Most of the application specific Modules can be easily customized to add new versions easily. For more pipeline specific customization, a system of "Virtual Modules" can be used to streamline Job submission and error detection. Finally, if you really want to go to town, you can use the Smedge 3 API to write your own Modules that can do anything you can dream of with a computer.
Smedge currently includes Modules to render:
# 3D Studio Max
# After Effects
# Air
# Alias Studio
# Blender
# Cinema 4D
# Combustion
# Digital Fusion
# finalRender for Maya
# Lightwave
# Maya
# MayaMan
# mental ray for Maya
# mental ray standalone
# Nuke
# RenderMan for Maya
# Shake
# Turtle for Maya
# Viz
# XSI
And anything else that you can control from a commandline
Production Tested
Smedge has been in production use for over 6 years, and Smedge 3 is currently in producton use at top production and education facilities all around the world. Users have had hundreds of machines running thousands of jobs and millions of frames, of all possible resolutions.
Powerful and Intuitive GUI
Smedge includes a graphical Shell application that allows you full control over every aspect of your system, in a format that allows you to see the status of anything with ease. Yet it also includes integrated security that allows you to limit the amount of control that users have. It has a powerful interface for editing Jobs and the ability to quickly and easily configure all settings for all of your engines at one time. The GUI, as with any Shell application, will automatically have the ability to submit and control any new Products you develop, maintaining a consistent and understandable interface for your users.
There are also extra graphic Shell programs that allow customized interaction, including the Herald, which you can configure to respond to Job or Work events with one of several actions. Actions available range from displaying a message or playing a sound to sending an email, executing a command or saving Job or Work information to a file.
Ready for automation
Smedge ships with a suite of commandline driven Shell programs, giving you the tools you need to deeply integrate Smedge into your full production pipeline with simple batch scripts, built-in scripting languages in third-party applications (like MEL), or through any programming language you please. Included Shells:
ConfigureMaster Used to control Master distribution options, type options, restrictions and licensing.
Engine Used to list and control the operation of Engines.
Job Used to list and control the operation of Jobs, or to display information about the installed Products.
PoolManager Used to list information about the Pools.
Submit Used to submit Jobs into the system.
Seamless cross-platform operation
All Smedge components are designed to work seamless across platforms. You can run any component on any type of machine and all of your machines will automatically integrate with each other. You can also set up automatic path translations across platforms so that when you submit a Job from Windows with a drive letter, the Linux clients will be able to find the same file with the correct Unix style path.
Easy upgradability
As of Smedge 3 version 2.1, you can upgrade your systems at your leisure, because Smedge communication is both backwards and forwards compatible. Just upgrade your Master, and then you can upgrade any other machine at any time, even while work is going on the rest of the network. And if you have that one old piece of hardware that you can't get rid of, and can't upgrade, it will still be able to connect to your upgraded systems. Some newer features may not work identically on older versions.
Event driven architecture
Smedge uses an event-driven internal architecture to make the most use of your available resources. It also means that Shells can be kept up-to-date automatically, all with a minimum of additional overhead on your network. Additionally, Smedge offers several ways that you can leverage these events for yourself, allowing you to respond to events by performing any number of customizable actions.
Easily extensible
Edit a simple text file to create your own custom Products, complete with integrated parameters. Some products allow easy customization for different versions, and the Virtual Module system allows you to create your own Module to control nearly anything. Smedge uses a simple variable substitution system to get the data from your definition file into the system, and allow you to access it again, for example in reponse to the event commands or when actually performing the work.
Multiple Job Prioritizations
Smedge includes several ways to organize and prioritize your Jobs, including a numerical priority for each Job and "Pools" of machines that can be prioritized for each Engine. You can also configure Smedge to use either a "first-in, first-out" queue for otherwise equal priority Jobs, or to perform the work "round-robin" style, making sure that every unfinished Job gets some machine time.
Operation as a Service/daemon
Smedge can be configured to run as a background process (a Windows "Service" or a Linux "daemon"), allowing you to operate Smedge without having to log in and consume the extra memory and CPU processing required for a normal user terminal. This means that more of the machine resources are available for the work.
Automatic Shared Disk Management
Smedge can automatically attempt to remap network drives that may be required for your Jobs to process correctly. The system can be defined as an option for specific Products, or as a parameter of your Jobs themselves.