G'day Catalin :) Sorry for taking a while to reply.
Ok, V0.3.0 is fully compatible with Blender 2.92.
Yes packing is necessary to get external assets to render
Pressing render during synchronisation should render on the local host("this machine" in the Crowdrender panel), but a node that is synchronising will not render. You'll need to wait until the next frame, or, cancel the current frame and start another render once all your nodes are synchronised.
Slow rendering, yes this can happen, though usually you can get a decent speed up. There are several reasons why the render might be slow the first time.
Load balancing is off, try manual load balancing instead of automatic, if the "edit load balancing" menu, you can adjust how much of the total screen area is assigned to each node. Playing with these values can help a lot.
By default, your CPU will also render if you select CUDA/OPTIX or OpenCL, this is because, by default, when we query cycles, the CPU is returned as a valid option for each of those render device types. As you might have already found out, if you use hybrid, you can get varied results. I've experienced dramatic slow downs when introducing the CPU to render with the GPU since in certain cases, the CPU can grab many tiles and then struggle to finish them, the GPU then finishes all it can, and is idle. The best speed ups for hybrid also use smaller tile sizes, so if you've configured your tile sizes to be large, you'll likely find that the CPU is holding the scene up. You can easily turn off the CPU in the render settings for each node.
Does any of that help? Keen to know more and help you out if I can :)
G'day Catalin :) Sorry for taking a while to reply.
Ok, V0.3.0 is fully compatible with Blender 2.92.
Yes packing is necessary to get external assets to render
Pressing render during synchronisation should render on the local host("this machine" in the Crowdrender panel), but a node that is synchronising will not render. You'll need to wait until the next frame, or, cancel the current frame and start another render once all your nodes are synchronised.
Slow rendering, yes this can happen, though usually you can get a decent speed up. There are several reasons why the render might be slow the first time.
Load balancing is off, try manual load balancing instead of automatic, if the "edit load balancing" menu, you can adjust how much of the total screen area is assigned to each node. Playing with these values can help a lot.
By default, your CPU will also render if you select CUDA/OPTIX or OpenCL, this is because, by default, when we query cycles, the CPU is returned as a valid option for each of those render device types. As you might have already found out, if you use hybrid, you can get varied results. I've experienced dramatic slow downs when introducing the CPU to render with the GPU since in certain cases, the CPU can grab many tiles and then struggle to finish them, the GPU then finishes all it can, and is idle. The best speed ups for hybrid also use smaller tile sizes, so if you've configured your tile sizes to be large, you'll likely find that the CPU is holding the scene up. You can easily turn off the CPU in the render settings for each node.
Does any of that help? Keen to know more and help you out if I can :)