DreamLight Constellation 2.0 Released

DreamLight Constellation 2.0 – Upgrade Released
Commemorating DreamLight’s 30’th Anniversary

In celebration of DreamLight’s 30’th anniversary we’re pleased to announce that our newly upgraded DreamLight® Constellation™ 2.0 network render controller for LightWave 3D has been released and is available immediately.

DreamLight Constellation 2.0 – Created by Michael Scaramozzino
Author of the book Creating a 3D Animated CGI Short & Mastering LightWave ScreamerNet LWSN

DreamLight Constellation is available in a FREE LITE version for download. The FREE LITE version is limited to one render node/computer at a time and does not save custom user preferences between launches. The FREE LITE version is primarily targeted to those who only wish to use a flexible scene render queue to batch render on a single render node (computer). It may also be used to individually test all three types of available render nodes including local nodes, remote nodes and cross-platform nodes on your specific network and setup to verify that it works as desired before ordering a registered license key to unlock additional nodes/computers and save custom settings between launches.

Download the FREE LITE version today to give it a spin on your network. Then when satisfied simply purchase a license key to unlock your desired number of render nodes. You would generally run one render node (instance of LWSN) per computer. So a 5-node license would support up to five render computers if you run one node per computer. The following license levels are available:

• FREE LITE Version: 1-Node (computer) and does not save custom user settings between launches.
• STD 5-Node Standard Version: Limited to 5 render nodes (computers) and saves custom settings.
• PRO 10-Node Professional Version: Limited to 10 render nodes (computers) and saves custom settings.
• ENT Unlimited Node Enterprise Version: Unlimited render nodes (computers) and saves custom settings.

So go grab your copy today!

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DreamLight Constellation 2.0 New Modern Technology Foundation

 

DreamLight Constellation 2.0 has been completely rewritten from the ground up. While version 1 was originally developed in the proprietary LiveCode IDE this new version 2.0 has been completely rewritten in Node.js, JavaScript and developed using Facebook’s React and Electron to implement more mainstream modern technologies available for desktop, web and mobile application development. This new modern foundation will allow more rapid updates and more advanced future development including tighter integration into the host OS on Mac OS X and Windows. Embracing these new standard technologies also enables us to leverage them across our interactive web and application development for our main client services as well, for desktop, web and mobile apps.

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DreamLight Constellation 2.0 New Features

In addition to our famous “drag and drop dead easy™ network rendering” that we implemented with DreamLight Constellation version 1 and DLI_SNUB-Launcher, this new DreamLight Constellation 2.0 version adds significant new features on top of the entirely new modern foundation which will enable more rapid advancements going forward.

We’ve revamped our ScreamerNet LWSN communication stack to add more robustness to LightWave 3D cross-platform network rendering. This is particularly useful to help circumvent the typical SMB network cache issues that often derail Windows renders where LWSN reports “ignoring duplicate command” errors. In such cases LWSN is not reading a duplicate command from the network controller. It’s re-reading the previous command from the SMB network cache. As an initial workaround in DreamLight Constellation version 1 we had implemented a 30 second delay between LWSN commands to allow the SMB cache to clear between commands for Windows render nodes. This had a negative performance impact on Windows network rendering however that was most noticeable when rendering scenes where frames only took a minute or so each. That previously hard-coded delay has been removed. The more robust LWSN communications handling in version 2.0 allows most such errors to automatically correct themselves. We’ve also made the ScreamerNet Throttle setting user adjustable in the preferences panel for further network tuning. This brings the Windows version performance up to par with the already fast and robust Mac version.

The new scene queue reports additional rendering information than version 1. This new information includes elapsed time, average time per frame, estimated remaining time and estimated time of completion. Current scene rendering progress is reported in the main window’s progress thermometer as well as in the native OS taskbar/dock icon. And when scenes complete rendering system notifications are sent to the host operating system’s notification manager on Mac OS X and windows to provide more user feedback. Mac OS X dock notification badges are also supported to report rendered scene completions when running in the background. Future updates planned in the version 2 roadmap will add additional node status reporting to compliment the new scene reporting.

We’ve completely rebuilt the window and drawer GUI in JavaScript/CSS for a more modern and flexible implementation. The main GUI interface window is now fully resizable including support for OS native full screen mode. User workspace customization for window size and position along with window divider position and grid column sizes are all fully adjustable and are saved/reloaded across subsequent launches in all licensed versions.

The more modern and flexible foundation will allow more frequent and advanced updates with tighter native OS optimization going forward.

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