8da71a323f
- Hide sidebar in pages visible in the top nav, except for Docs - Create an "About" page, featuring the design principles - Update components illustration - Move the "What's new in Flamenco 3" page in the FAQ - Add TOD to the FAQ - Tweak homepage layout to use two columns - Styling: slightly reduce max page width (around 12 words per line) - Styling: tweak padding for titles and paragraphs
103 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
103 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: About
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weight: 1
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aliases:
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- /design-principles/
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geekdocNav: false
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geekdocHidden: true
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---
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{{< columns >}} <!-- begin columns block -->
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Flamenco is a lightweight, cross-platform framework to dispatch and schedule rendering jobs for smaller teams, or individuals.
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[Blender Studio][studio] uses Flamenco in production with a handful of servers
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(scaling up to hundreds of servers on demand), and combines those with desktop
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workstations when they're not used by the artists.
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The Flamenco project distributes executables and a Blender add-on
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to install and run ([downloads][downloads]).
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As the Blender.org project is built on free and Open Source software, Linux is
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the main platform Flamenco is developed against. Windows and MacOS will also be
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supported, but on a best-effort basis with help from the community.
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[downloads]: {{< ref "/download/" >}}
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[studio]: https://studio.blender.org/
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<---> <!-- magic separator, between columns -->
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Example of a Flamenco configuration.
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{{< /columns >}}
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## Design Principles
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The following principles guide the design of Flamenco:
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{{< columns >}} <!-- begin columns block -->
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### Blender.org Project
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Flamenco is a true blender.org project. This means that it's Free and Open
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Source, made by the community, lead by Blender HQ. Its development will fall
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under the umbrella of the [Pipline, Assets & IO][PAIO] module.
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[PAIO]: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/wiki/Module:%20Pipeline,%20Assets%20&%20I/O
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### Minimal Authentication & Organisation
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Because Flamenco is aimed at small studios and individuals, it won't offer
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much in terms of user authentication, nor the organisation of users into groups.
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[Custom job types][jobtypes] can be used to attach arbitrary metadata to jobs,
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such as the submitter's name, a project identifier, etc.
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[jobtypes]: {{< ref "/usage/job-types" >}}
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### Minimize External Components
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Running Flamenco should be extremely simple. This means that it should depend
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on as few external packages as possible. Apart from the Flamenco components
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themselves, all you need to install is [Blender][blender].
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The downside of this is that development might take longer, as some things
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that an external service could solve need to be implemented. This trade-off of
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developer time for simplicity of use is considered a good thing, though.
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[blender]: https://www.blender.org/
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<---> <!-- magic separator, between columns -->
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### No Errors, Guide Users To Success
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Instead of stopping with a description of what's wrong, like "no database
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configured", Flamenco should show something helpful in which you're guided
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towards a working system.
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### Customisable
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Studio pipeline developers / TDs should be able to customise the behaviour of
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Flamenco. They should be able to create new [job types][jobtypes], and adjust
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existing job types to their needs. For this, Flamenco uses JavaScript to convert
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a job definition like "*render this blend file, frames 1-100*" into individual
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tasks for computers to execute.
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[jobtypes]: {{< ref "/usage/job-types" >}}
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### Work offline
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Like Blender itself, Flamenco should be able to fully work offline. That is,
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work without internet connection. If any future feature should need such a
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connection, that feature should always be optional, and be disabled by default.
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### Data Storage
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Data should be stored as plain files whenever possible. Where a higher level
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of coordination is required, an embedded database can be used; currently
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Flamenco uses [SQLite][sqlite] for this.
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[sqlite]: https://pkg.go.dev/modernc.org/sqlite
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{{< /columns >}}
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