Jeff Mottle Posted October 5, 2007 Share Posted October 5, 2007 Someone made a post in another thread about proprietary tools and it got me thinking. What sort of tools have people developed to help production and management within their companies. It could be a special system to track jobs, speed up rendering workflows or even the billing system. Post the tool you have developed and how it works (without giving away too many details if you are not comfortable). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 5, 2007 Share Posted October 5, 2007 My company developed a "start up" program for all of the workstations in the office which are used for ArchiCAD work during the day. At the end of the day when I need computers for network rendering I can simply enter the number of render nodes I need for that night to render a job. As each person logs off at the end of the day that computer will check a database and if it is marked as being needed for rendering it will reboot and start up the different programs loaded as services. If there are computers that were shut down before I knew I needed them the start up program will send a magic packet to their network cards which are always on and remotely start up those machines. Because our company is LEED certified and big on Green initiatives it isn't realistic for all of our 150 computers to be on all of the time so this program helps us keep energy consumption down as well as saving me all of the time it would take to go around and individually turn each machine on. The start up program its self is really several programs that run in sequence in order to achieve the goal of starting up machines and it has taken us years to get it working exactly the way we want it to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clauco Posted October 5, 2007 Share Posted October 5, 2007 My company developed a "start up" program for all of the workstations in the office which are used for ArchiCAD work during the day. At the end of the day when I need computers for network rendering I can simply enter the number of render nodes I need for that night to render a job. As each person logs off at the end of the day that computer will check a database and if it is marked as being needed for rendering it will reboot and start up the different programs loaded as services. If there are computers that were shut down before I knew I needed them the start up program will send a magic packet to their network cards which are always on and remotely start up those machines. Because our company is LEED certified and big on Green initiatives it isn't realistic for all of our 150 computers to be on all of the time so this program helps us keep energy consumption down as well as saving me all of the time it would take to go around and individually turn each machine on. The start up program its self is really several programs that run in sequence in order to achieve the goal of starting up machines and it has taken us years to get it working exactly the way we want it to. Wow man! That sounds very usefull!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moshenko Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 I actually started my company with a proprietary tool that was unrelated to the creation of renderings. We developed a web-based archive management system that would index archived content from CD/DVD and allow users to view, organize and search that content. Within it we built tools for presentation, distribution and repurposing of archived (meaning "inactive") content. It was 100% web-based and built using PHP, MySQL, PERL and some other free tools. The application itself was quite good but ultimately the idea failed for various reasons. I would like to say that we use the application today but it has not been kept up and sits in (ironically) archives. Now, however, we are creating lots of proprietary tools for Max and VRay work such as: - A selection mask tool (creating alpha masks from layers with automated functions); - A Photoshop tool to prepare masks and layers; - An automated IRMap/render script that takes all of the manual naming work out of the process of rendering in VRay and works in a networked environment; - A wake on lan (WOL) framework for Backburner Some of these may be released for general use if they prove to work without too much customization. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 The automated IRmap script would be top on my list for general use! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt McDonald Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 At the end of the day when I need computers for network rendering I can simply enter the number of render nodes I need for that night to render a job. As each person logs off at the end of the day that computer will check a database and if it is marked as being needed for rendering it will reboot and start up the different programs loaded as services. That's the coolest thing since sliced bread! We created a little program that we use in conjunction with our photospectrometer that helps us create highly accurate RGB builds of paint colors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt McDonald Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 and this is a cool thread BTW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arturito Posted October 11, 2007 Share Posted October 11, 2007 we take a break and drink something twice a day....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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