RenderFlow 1.1 - New UI, User Groups, and Software Analytics

Version 1.1 brings visual improvements, software analytics, user groups, and granular access control for larger teams.

This release also refines archviz render management and render farm monitoring for studios, with smoother pipelines for 3ds max users.

Let’s dive into the details:

Updated Look

We improved overall UI readability by fine-tuning contrast and colors. We also made subtle changes to tables and selection states, and added more color to status and priority elements. We like it so much that we made dark mode the default, we hope everyone agrees.

RenderFlow job list and details

RenderFlow node list

We made important changes to the Quick Controls in the top right corner. Node mode now has a dedicated toggle button, so you can activate or disable it with one click. We moved all other settings to a dropdown where you can change pool, switch server, start spawner mode, or adjust your CPU affinity.

Updated quick controls

For dedicated render nodes, we created a new interface layout that shows: hardware, network, benchmark scores, essential controls, access to logs, and the current job. From now just like in Render Manager you won’t be able to submit jobs or monitor progress from a dedicated render node.

New node mode user interface

Granular Access Controls

Studios have been asking for granular access control and user groups since the initial release. We’ve been working on this for a while and we are exited to finally show it. By default, RenderFlow creates two user groups: one for the Admin (the user where RenderFlow server is running) and a User group for everyone else.

Create groups and assign users

You can create new groups for your artists, leads, and admins, and assign different rules and policies to them. For each group, you can control who can edit jobs, run commands, view statistics, change system settings, and many more. For most policies, you can define the level of control:

• None: the feature will be hidden or disabled for everyone

• Own: allow the feature for the users own node and jobs

• Group: allow the feature for all nodes and jobs in the same user group or pool

• Everyone: allow the feature for every user without restrictions

  
  

Policies per user group

Software Analytics

Our beloved feature from Render Manager is back and it’s even more powerful. While node details give you a great overview of the installed 3D apps and plugins, RenderFlow previously had no way to compare them. In the new software analytics page, we list all the installed apps and plugins across connected computers. You can select a base computer, and others will be compared against it, showing which plugins are installed or missing, making it easy to spot differences.

Compare apps and plugins

User Requests

Beyond the larger features, we also included smaller improvements requested by our customers.
Some of our customers reached out that they would like to monitor their farms with RenderFlow and place it on a dedicated screen or TV. The only problem was that RenderFlow closes the user interface after 15 minutes of idle time to save resources, making it less useful as the information always disappeared after a coffee break. In the latest version, we added an option in Settings > Appearances to disable this.

Disable Auto-close on Idle

One of our Discord members pointed out that tiled rendering options weren’t available for Scene Manager. We missed that in the last update but from now on, this won’t be a problem.

Scene Manager Tiled rendering option

Another Discord member is a heavy user of RenderFlow’s Spawner mode, which lets you fire up Corona DR (or V-Ray Spawner) on selected nodes and use them within Corona DR jobs or outside of RenderFlow. From now on, you can also schedule the start and stop of Spawner mode through the Scheduler.

Schedule when spawner mode starts or stops

Another request was to add the option to filter by tag. In earlier versions, we introduced tagging nodes, then recently batch tagging. Now we’ve added filter by tag to the nodes section, as well as filtering nodes or jobs by pool.

Filter nodes by tag

What’s Next?

With these updates, we have all the remaining essential features and a very strong foundation to continue building.
The next step is to add support for Maya, Nuke, Houdini, and Unreal, make it compatible with Linux, and extend our API and scripting capabilities so RenderFlow can be integrated into any pipeline.
If you have any suggestions, please reach out to our support or create a new topic on our Discord channel!