Blender: Add project render mode (Local vs Farm, default Farm) & per-publish toggle

[rhdutta]

Changelog Description

Add project-level default for render farm submission with per-publish override. A new Render on Farm project setting controls the default (True by default). Artists can override on publish via a new farm creator attribute to choose local vs farm rendering.

Additional review information

• Files changed:
  • ayon-blender/server/settings/render_settings.py
    • Added RenderSettingsModel.farm_default: bool (default True ).
    • UI label updated to “Render on Farm”; description clarifies default behavior.
  • ayon-blender/client/ayon_blender/plugins/create/create_render.py
    • Added creator attribute farm (BoolDef) to instance attributes.
    • Default derives from project_settings["RenderSettings"]["farm_default"].
  • ayon-blender/client/ayon_blender/plugins/publish/collect_render.py
    • Reads creator_attributes.farm → sets instance.data["farm"].
    • families: always includes render; includes render.farm only when farm is True.
• Behavior:
  • Managers set default render mode per project: local (False) or farm (True).
  • Artists can override per publish by toggling farm.
  • ExtractLocalRender already skips when instance.data["farm"] is True; runs when False.
• Backward compatibility:
  • Default remains Farm rendering (True) if no setting present.
  • Existing scenes benefit automatically; no schema breaks.

Testing notes:

1. In AYON Server settings, navigate to Blender → Render Settings and toggle Render on Farm (default True ).
2. In Blender, create a new Render instance.
   • Verify the creator UI shows a farm toggle defaulting to the project setting.
3. Publish with farm=False:
   • Expect local frames to render; ExtractLocalRender logs “Rendering animation locally…”.
   • instance.data["farm"] is False; families contains ["render"] only.
4. Publish with farm=True (override in the creator UI):
   • Local extractor is skipped; log shows “Instance marked farm=True; skipping local render.”
   • instance.data["farm"] is True; families contains ["render", "render.farm"].

[moonyuet]

maybe we can add a collector for this families, and this can be changed to:

Suggested change

	families = ["render"]
	families = ["render.local"]

[moonyuet]

Do you have some specific templates for this local rendering implementation? Asking this, as it would probably just take the last set of the representations transmitted into the published folder.

I guess it would be safe by creating instances per Aov and published and then put each instance into the same product group(e.g. aov_instance.data["productGroup"]="YourRenderGroup", as if we did in substance painter.
The other ways I could think of is to add outputName being part of the representation data and that outputName could be Aov name or we can use aov name as "name" in the representation data except for the beauty. But these two ways are not as innovative as creating instance per aov. Thought? @BigRoy @antirotor

[BigRoy]

Do you have some specific templates for this local rendering implementation? Asking this, as it would probably just take the last set of the representations transmitted into the published folder.

I guess it would be safe by creating instances per Aov and published and then put each instance into the same product group(e.g. aov_instance.data["productGroup"]="YourRenderGroup", as if we did in substance painter.

Each AOV would need its own instance and product - yes.
They should not become representations of the one instance, furthermore... they should behave exactly like a farm render.

[rhdutta]

Forgive me as I'm quite new to Blender and Ayon, and I'm not entirely clear on this review. The usecase I implemented wasn't concerned with AOVs, but I agree support for them is a good idea. I tried looking at the Substance repo but did not see the AOV instance implementation there. Can i get some clarification on how to go about this? Is there an example I can reference, or is someone able to assist? @BigRoy @moonyuet @antirotor

[moonyuet]

@rhdutta you can take reference from this pesudo-code but it would be much safer to have implemented the collector(something like collect_render_local for creating all these instances.

import os
import ayon_api
from ayon_core.pipeline.create import get_product_name

context = instance.context
project_name = context.data["projectName"]
folder_entity = ayon_api.get_folder_by_path(
    project_name,
    instance.data["folderPath"]
)
task_name = instance.data.get("task")
task_entity = None
if folder_entity and task_name:
    task_entity = ayon_api.get_task_by_name(
        project_name, folder_entity["id"], task_name
    )
task_name = task_type = None
if task_entity:
    task_name = task_entity["name"]
    task_type = task_entity["taskType"]

# Collect expected files by AOV
expected = instance.data.get("expectedFiles", [])

for aov, files in expected.items():
    suffix = f"_{aov}"
    first = files[0]
    dirpath = os.path.dirname(first)
    ext = os.path.splitext(first)[1].lstrip(".").lower() or "exr"
    # TODO: The product type actually isn't 'texture' currently but
    #   for now this is only done so the product name starts with
    #   'texture'
    render_product_name = get_product_name(
        project_name=context.data["projectName"],
        task_name=task_name,
        task_type=task_type,
        host_name=context.data["hostName"],
        product_type="render",
        variant=instance.data["variant"] + suffix,
        project_settings=context.data["project_settings"]
    )
    render_product_group_name = get_product_name(
        project_name=context.data["projectName"],
        task_name=task_name,
        task_type=task_type,
        host_name=context.data["hostName"],
        product_type="render",
        variant=instance.data["variant"],
        project_settings=context.data["project_settings"]
    )

    # Prepare representation
    representation = {
        "name": ext.lstrip("."),
        "ext": ext.lstrip("."),
        "files": [os.path.basename(file) for file in files]
    }

    representation["tags"] = ["review"]
    representation["stagingDir"] = dirpath
    # Clone the instance
    product_type = "image"
    render_instance = context.create_instance(render_product_name)
    render_instance[:] = instance[:]
    render_instance.data.update(copy.deepcopy(dict(instance.data)))
    render_instance.data["name"] = render_product_name
    render_instance.data["label"] = render_product_name
    render_instance.data["productName"] = render_product_name
    render_instance.data["productType"] = product_type
    render_instance.data["family"] = product_type
    render_instance.data["families"] = [product_type]
    # add review as families when marked as reviewables enabled.
    if instance.data["creator_attributes"].get("review"):
        render_instance.data["families"].append("review")

    render_instance.data["representations"] = [representation]

    # Group the textures together in the loader
    render_instance.data["productGroup"] = render_product_group_name
    # colorspace data
    ocio_path: str = os.getenv("OCIO", "")
    display: str = bpy.context.scene.display_settings.display_device
    view: str = bpy.context.scene.view_settings.view_transform
    render_instance.data["colorspace"] = {
            "colorspaceConfig": ocio_path,
            "colorspaceDisplay": display,
            "colorspaceView": view,
        }

[LiborBatek]

@rhdutta any news?
...would be actually nice to make this happen some time...pretty useful feature! cheers

[rhdutta]

@LiborBatek Unfortunately I've had to move on to other pressing matters and have not had the cycles to revisit this.

If there's any way to hand this off that would probably be best, otherwise I will try and get back to it in the weeks ahead.

[iLLiCiTiT]

Suggested change

	families.append("render.farm")
	families.append("render.farm")
	else:
	families.append("render.local")

[BigRoy]

Closing this in favor of #217