This might sound ridiculous to some but I know most of you out there use AIM. I want to create an AIM bot that you can set up and create a screen name for your farm. Then as your render farm is processing you can write the Bot and get this as an example:
Mark: Hey
DeadlineBOT: What would you like to see?
Mark: Stats
DeadlineBOT: Here you go...
Job Statistics
Date/Time: 2006-06-16 11:47:35
Active Jobs: 0
Completed Jobs: 0
......
Total Render Time: 0 s
Slave Statistics
Completed Tasks: 72
Failed Tasks: 3
Total Tasks: 75
DeadlineBOT: Anything Else?
Mark: No
Then you can ask it other questions and you could configure it to give you outputs that you really need at that moment. I know there are times when i dont have my computer by me and i really want to check my renders form a random place. As we all know not every computer you can set up to use deadline so it would be nice to have the ability to check on it with the ease of AIM. From any device. My cell has aim, hell my cat might have AIM i just cant find it. What i am saying is that it would give you a great opportunity to watch whats going on from anywhere.
My proposal. I would like to see if either A. someone has already started this. Or B. Someone has a ton of time and would like to create this. Or C. I take a stab at it and try to write something to do it.
My other question is would this be possible with the amount of access we have or would this have to be a core level integration?
Mark Theriault
Technical Director 3D FX
Somersault Post Production Chicago
