Maybe it’s not a wish but something I missed !
What could be very useful is a function to allow jobs with for example machine limit set to 5 to use more when other slaves are available.
Ex: If a job is priority 90 + machine limit 5, it can use more if available and becoming interruptible for machine bellow machine limit.
Users can have their render done faster without looking at renderfarm availability.
this option could work for Machine limit, pool limit and group limit
Currently, machine limits are “hard” limits, so it’s not possible for the job to automatically take more slaves when they become available. Generally, we recommend using pools to help balance the farm. Pools can be used to prioritize projects/shots, but they can also be used to prioritize rendering applications if you wish.
For example, if you had 10 machines, and you wanted to split up 3dsmax and Nuke jobs evenly, you could create a pool for each, and then assign them like this:
Slaves 1-5: 3dsmax, Nuke
Slaves 6-10: Nuke, 3dsmax
So if there are jobs from both pools in the farm, each will get half the farm. When Nuke jobs finish, then 3dsmax can take over, but then allow Nuke jobs to get half the farm again when they are submitted.
We have considered a round-robin approach for rendering between jobs with the same priority. That is essentially the same as “soft” machine limits, since it allows jobs of the same priority to share the farm. However, we don’t have an ETA on when such a feature would be implemented.
Cheers,