Specify priority preview frames

[BigRoy]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues.

Please describe the feature you have in mind and explain what the current shortcomings are?

It would be nice if we can make AYON's deadline job submissions have customized frame/task priorities so that e.g. the first frame, last frame and some intermittent frames are rendered first so a quick overview of the job can be investigated without needing to render all the frames in sequence by default.

How would you imagine the implementation of the feature?

I think we should have an enum attribute and maybe studio settings to define the possible behavior, but I frequent pattern is:

• Sequence (default) - this would be the current behavior | like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... 30
• Start frame, end frame, every Nth frame, rest of sequence. | like 1, 30, 10 20, 2, 3, 4... 29
• Every Nth frame, rest of sequence | like 1, 10, 20, 30, 2, 3, 4... 29

We could also add an optional publisher UI attribute where the user could specify custom 'priority' frames like e.g. a string field where they can do 15,17-20 and then those frames/ranges would be prioritized first whereaf it would apply the rest of the behavior from the setting described above.

Note that this is trivial to implement for Deadline submissions because submitting when submitting any recurring frames in the pattern will be ignored. So we can just prefix the submission frame range with the priority frames.

• 1,10,1-10 renders 1, 10, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Are there any labels you wish to add?

• I have added the relevant labels to the enhancement request.

Describe alternatives you've considered:

Manually after job submission change the frame list order in Deadline but I'd rather do it automatically on submission

Additional context:

Preferably this is implemented in a way that it'd work for all deadline submissions.

In Royal Render I believe these are so called "preview frames"

[m-u-r-p-h-y]

These are built in Deadline options

Additional Frame Options

Render Preview Job First: When enabled, two jobs will be submitted - a PREVIEW job with a fraction of the frames, and a REST job with all other frames. The PREVIEW job can be submitted with slightly higher priority and will provide a glimpse into the final result. If its output looks incorrect, you can suspend the REST job before wasting render time rendering a wrong submission.

Priority Offset: Specify a higher priority for the PREVIEW job.

Number of Preview Frames: Specify the number of frames to preview.

Submit Dependent Job With Remaining Frames: If enabled, the REST job will be dependent on the PREVIEW job.

Task Order: The order in which to render the frames for the job.

Out Of Order Step: Defines the Nth frame step to use for some of the Task Order options.