|
|
View Forum Thread
Anyone can view the forums, but you need to log in in order to post messages.
> Forum Home >
Feature Requests >
Disable/Enable engine
|
Wed, 14/Jul/2010 1:20 PM |
Martin
69 Posts
|
I would suggest a small utility for enabling and/or disabling engines without need of doing it through Smedge GUI.
For artists it is very stressful to use Smedge GUI and it is quite difficult to explain them how to enable/disable computers for rendering.
Small utility (sort of a street light with red and green buttons) running in background on screen would be very helpful.
|
|
|
|
Wed, 14/Jul/2010 2:20 PM |
Robin
1138 Posts
|
Smedge 2010 Update 2 includes Aegis, which is a standalone application that can be started independently of SmedgeGui. Aegis provides 3 buttons with nice red, yellow and green bitmaps as well as descriptive text, for enabling and disabling the local machine.
The Aegis application is with all of the Smedge component applications. For Windows and Linux users, this is where the Smedge program files are installed. On a Mac, the individual component applications are all hidden inside the Smedge application bundle. To find them, you can use the SmedgeGui menu command System > Smedge Files > Browse the Application Folder. Alternately, you can right-click on the Smedge application icon in the Finder and choose "View Package Contents". The component applications are in the Contents/MacOS folder.
The next thing I want to add is basic enable/disable control in Conspectus, so you can easily enable or disable other machines again without having to start SmedgeGui (Conspectus is also a standalone application separate from SmedgeGui). Right now, Conspectus only shows you the current status, and does not allow you to change engine status.
Thanks
-robin
|
|
|
|
Thu, 15/Jul/2010 3:51 AM |
Martin
69 Posts
|
Aegis? You are right! It is there. :)
I would suggest to include it to Program Group icons so it can easily be added to Startup folder.
Other thing for improvement is I can not see what stage my computer is at the moment. Maybe just single icon should be visible at a time to tell me the current state (am I rendering or not?) and only if I want to change the state and click on the icon all three icons will show up. This way it could also be a lot smaller.
On "mouse over event" it could show the name of the job and some details about it of the machine is rendering at that moment.
And last thing to polish it to excellence could be a small button on Title bar to make this window Always on top.
:)
|
|
|
|
Mon, 19/Jul/2010 4:13 PM |
Robin
1138 Posts
|
Nice suggestions. I will try to work those into the next release.
I had actually originally thought that it would be a single button, and it would show you the status. Then when you click on it, the option would change. But then I thought that 3 buttons is more obvious. You can make the buttons very small. The text will reduce and disappear as needed.
The Aegis source code is also included as part of the Smedge API, so if anyone out there wants to take a stab at making it better, please feel free, and share it with the rest of us. Otherwise, you will have to wait until I get a chance to do the work myself.
Thanks
-robin
|
|
|
|
Thu, 09/Sep/2010 9:59 PM |
Jesse
6 Posts
|
Hi Robin,
A few users (and our owner) at work have asked about some sort of a Smedge feedback mechanism; I think what they want is something like this: an icon in the top menu bar that shows that your station is ACTIVE as a Smedge node, and perhaps a similar output to Conspectus, but for the single node. That way, the user knows if a slowdown might have to do with Smedge vs. something else in the OS.
All of this is Mac-centric in my mind since that is what we use here, but I supose it would be similar on Windows(?).
Anyway, not sure i this is possible or if you already have something like this... but is sounds similar the request from Martin.
Thanks, Jesse
|
|
|
|
Fri, 10/Sep/2010 1:29 PM |
Robin
1138 Posts
|
I'll see how I can work something like that in.
Thanks
-robin
|
|
|
|
|
|
. |