SheepIt Render Farm Client

Overview

SheepIt Render Farm Client is an Open Source client for the distributed render farm SheepIt.

Compilation

You will need Java 11 or higher. (OpenJDK and Oracle are both supported). To create the jar file, simply type ./gradlew shadowJar on linux/OSX and gradlew.bat shadowJar on Windows in the project's root directory.

Usage

Once you have the jar file, you can see how to use it by running:

java -jar build/libs/sheepit-client-all.jar --help

When you are doing development work, you can use a mirror of the main site specially made for demo/dev. The mirror is located at https://sandbox.sheepit-renderfarm.com, and you can use it by passing -server https://sandbox.sheepit-renderfarm.com to your invocation of the client.

At the command line ui (-ui text / -ui oneLine) you could type in the following commands and press enter to control the client:

• status: get the current status of the client (paused, stoped, etc.)
• priority : set the renderer process priority
• block: block the current project
• pause: pause the client to request new jobs after the current frame has finished to render
• resume: resume the client after it was paused
• stop: stop the client after the current frame has finished
• cancel: cancel the stop request
• quit: stop the client directly without finishing the current frame

Versioning scheme

The main versioning follows the following scheme: vA.BBCCC.D

• A: major version
• BB: last two digits of year (2023 -> 23)
• CCC: day of year with leading zeroes (340 is December 6th)
• D: number of repeated builds on that day

Development versions use a different schema for "D", generated by "git describe", e.g. v6.23006.1-14-g840d517.

For historic reasons, we need to make sure that neither X nor Y of X.Y.Z exceeds 5 digits to be compatible with the backend.