Problem/Use Case

For larger projects it starts to make sense to use multiple files to build a scene, especially for projects where there are more than one artist working on the project. Since blender its self does not have version control, having one blend file with all the assets of the scene shared amongst artists is risky, conflicts can easily occur.

The problem for crowdrender is that the alpha currently only manages the blend file the user has open. One file per session. This obviously presents a problem for use with larger and more complex projects.

Proposal

The proposal is to manage all dependencies of a blend file, that is all files that the blend file needs in order to render the scene correctly as it would be on a single machine without using crowdrender. Not that there is a workaround for this see here.

This would mean artists would be able to link, append and edit external files all the while crowdrender would manage these events, ensuring that the attached second machine is ready to render the scene.