You have two ways to run the client on an artists workstation: 



Working hours


You can set your working hours in the configuration of the client.

E.g. from Monday to Friday, each day from 9am to 8pm.


During that time the Client is completely disabled. It would not take any jobs.

The client only renders at night and weekend.


User is logged out:

If the user is logged out, the client starts to render. So if the artist leaves the company early or is not working on this day, the client renders.



Disadvantages of working hours:


  • The client do not take a job at all during the working hours.
  • Some artist do not log out if they leave. The client stays disabled even if the artist do not come in the next day.
  • Your workstations usually have multiple cores. Most of the Artists do not use multiple cores. So you have a lot of unused CPUs. 



Enabled by default


The client is enabled by default and will get jobs.

Of course you can disable the client.


  • High CPU usage:
    If a high CPU usage was found, the client does not take a job. So if you start a simulation or any other processing on the machine, it will not get a job.
    If the client is already rendering and the Artists takes a high CPU usage for multiplte minutes, the job is aborted.
  • Enable after x minutes of low CPU usage and no user interaction:
    If you have manually disabled the client, then the client still checks for the CPU usage of the machine and asks Windows for any user interaction.
    So artists cannot forget to turn the client back on if they leave the company.
    There are two modes
    a) If the CPU usage is very low for 40 minutes, then it re-enables itself.
    b) If the CPU usage is very low AND no user interaction for 40 minutes, then it re-enables itself.
  • Reserve CPUs for Interactive User:
    You usally do not use all of your 4 (or 8, 16...) cores for work, most of the time maximal one CPU. So why keep the other CPUs unused?
    The client offer a switch to keep one CPU from rendering. And of course the other CPUs still run with low/idle priority, so if you need more power, you get more.
    By default, the reserve CPU option is used as long as somebody is logged in. (You can change that it is only enabled during working hours if someone is logged OR that it is always enabled during working hours, no matter if someone is logged in or
    not. Please see rrClient Configuration help)
    Note: This feature can not controll the network access. So if you compose and load a lot of files or if the client starts to render a compositing, then the network can get slower for other processes on that machine. You can set the number of cores in the client config. 
    Note: If you have hyperthreading enabled in your system and your task manager shows 16 cores, then you only have 8 real physical cores. Each core gets two tasks at the same time. So if you render with 8 threads, then all cores are used. So the value should be higher than on systems without hyperthreading enabled.
  • Background Render Jobs:
    If you submit a job with the option "Little job", then the client takes this job even if the client is disabled. This should only be used for jobs, that do not require to load big meshes, a lot of textures or a lot of memory. Jobs that only need the CPU. Cause the CPU is the only part of the render that can be controlled to run with low/idle priority. The artist on the workstation should not even notice that something is rendering cause he still gets everything he requires to work (memory, network access, CPU).