Newer, faster architecture
ArtistView has been largely rewritten, boasting a newer, faster, caching mechanism; a new internal messaging system; a new system for retrieving and displaying job logs; a newer, much faster filtering and searching system; a faster EXR processing and general image caching system; and shorter startup times. Despite its new features, ArtistView 6.8 is the fastest Qube GUI we've ever offered.
Updated Look and Feel
- Supervisor and license info now displayed in title bar
- Filters for Pending, Running, Failed, etc are now labeled
- Refresh button moved to the left, to mimic WranglerView
- Frame/Instance list moved below job list to mimic WranglerView
- Color palette chosen for ease of use and reduction of eye fatigue
All-new job submission system with centralized preferences, exclusive to ArtistView (beta)
With Qube 6.8, ArtistView now ships with a beta version of Qube's new submission system. This system is designed to be more flexible, easier to use, easier to extend, and has a built-in central preferences system that no longer requires the use of a centralized preferences file - all preferences for all users are now stored in a separate database on the supervisor.
Key Features:
- Central preferences/settings that work without any configuration. If you can see the job list, you can also set/retrieve preferences. Preferences can be set for:
- User, specific to a given submission UI; for example: Priority for my Maya jobs, or path to AfterEffects executable for my jobs.
- User, common across all submission UIs; for example: Priority for all of my jobs, or default number of instances for all of my jobs.
- All users, specific to a given submission UI; for example: Priority for all users' Maya jobs, or path to AfterEffects executable for all users' jobs.
- All users, common across all submission UIs; for example: Priority for all users' jobs, or default number of instances for all users' jobs.
- Central preferences can, for the first time, be mandated. If a preference is mandated at the "ALL USERS" level, then a user cannot change the default value or the submitted value for the given field. The field will be visible, but grayed-out/inactive for the user.
- Values that display in green are values that come from preferences.
- Tabbed interface for less clutter - essential parameters are visible immediately. Advanced parameters are located in tabs.
- Submission UIs are driven by less complicated python scripts to make authoring new submission UIs easier (less complicated that the old "SimpleCmd" architecture found in WranglerView)
- Access to Qube parameters (priority, instances, retry count, regex parsing, etc) is available from user-created submission scripts for the first time. Previously, only application-specific parameters could be accessed from SimpleCmds, so there was no way to change, for example, Priority, from the submission script, itself.
- Submission UI can "talk" to ArtistView to let AV know when a new job has been submitted. This is true even when the submission UI is launched from an application like Maya or AfterEffects.
- For the first time, the submission system has its own executable, "qubeSubmission[.app|.exe]," which makes bringing up submission dialogs from other applications much faster.
- The submission executable supports ingest of parameters via string repr python dictionaries (as always, via --submitDict), python pickle files (via --submitPkl), and/or JSON files (via --submitJSON).
- ArtistView is aware of which UI submitted each job in its job list. If a resubmission is requested for a job it didn't submit, it will open a submission interface from WranglerView to run the resubmission.
- See skeleton.py in the submission_scripts directory (File > Open Submission Scripts Dir) for examples on how to create your own submission scripts, if you choose to do so.
- Coming soon: preference for parameter visibility - now parameters can be hidden for view from the common user, but still set by an admin and submitted with each job.
- Coming soon: more granularity for preferences, i.e. show-based or role-based preferences. For example: Lighters and modelers can have different settings for Maya, or ShowX can have different settings than ShowY when using Cinema4D.
Non-destructive job modification: append or replace properties when modifying multiple jobs
You can append properties to multiple jobs rather than replacing them. For example, if several jobs have been submitted with various processor and/or memory reservations, but the user (or submission utility) neglected at add a global/license reservation, you can now multi-select several jobs and add the new reservation without interfering with the existing reservations (that may be different for each of the selected jobs). Simply append to the string as shown above and Qube will do the right thing.
Attributes that support "appended" in a job modify dialog are:
- name
- omit/hosts
- omit/groups
- host order
- reservations
- restrictions
Display on the last X number of days' worth of jobs
Rather than setting a hard limit on the number of jobs to display, you can now display the last X days' worth of jobs.