Flamenco: The Simple Open Source Render Farm

This is an outline for the 60 minute interactive Labs Hands-On Class, SIGGRAPH 2023.

Attendee Experience

Attendees are expected to bring their own laptop, and to be able to manage files (extract ZIP/TAR archives, create directories, create and edit plain text files).

Experience with structured/code text files (YAML, JavaScript) is a plus. Having a code-oriented text editor (for example Visual Studio Code) available is recommended.

1. Introduction & Demo on own hardware (20 min)

• 5 min: introduction of the Flamenco project and its authors.
• Showing URL of where participants can download Flamenco, which can then happen during the following demo.
• 5 min: demo of setting up Flamenco on a single machine.
• 10 min: installing Flamenco on participants' laptops and runnnig a simple render job.

Learning outcome: how to install and use Flamenco in its simplest configuration.

2. Storage options (15 min)

• 5 min: explanation of Flamenco's various approaches to shared storage, including the Shaman storage system.
• 10 min: experimenting by participants on their own laptops, to experience the difference between the storage options.

Learning outcome: practical understanding of the storage options Flamenco supports.

3. Writing a Custom Job Type (20 min)

• 5 min: explanation of Flamenco's job type system and data model.
• 15 min: participants write a custom job type, by taking a built-in job type and expanding it to include some new metadata.

Learning outcome: understanding of Flamenco's job, task, command data structure, and the scripting that can be employed in a studio to customize Flamenco's behavior.

4. Conclusion & further steps (5 min)

• 5 min: conclusion of the class, including a note about Flamenco's cross platform support.
• note: this cross-platform support is an important factor in Flamenco's success, but is tricky to include in this hands-on class that should be doable by participants on a single laptop. This is why I'll only describe it.