Qube
Qube! is the ultimate render farm management system for the film and video game industries. Ideal for rendering and build processing alike, Qube! has demonstrated time and again that it can improve productivity and increase content quality while optimizing hardware resources.
Latest New Features in 6.6
PipelineFX video channel with all the lastest videos (including 6.7 and 6.8 betas)
*New Subscription Licensing*
You can now purchase Qube! Unlimited licenses on a month-to-month basis under "Qube! Subscription Licensing." The unique flexibility of this licensing model helps studios and organizations ramp up to meet project demands, or manage cash constrained operating expenses by paying for software licenses only when they are needed.
Real Cross Platform Support
Qube! was built in Square USA’s Final Fantasy production studio designed from the beginning to run on Windows, OSX and Linux platforms. Full functionality and performance is included across all three platforms. Choose any for the Supervisor and use any or all for the Workers and submission Clients.
Multi-threaded Supervisor
At the heart of Qube! is a multi-threaded Supervisor with the ability to manage thousands of jobs simultaneously. The multi-threaded architecture is highly-available, low-maintenance, and extremely stable. Adding more threads to the Supervisor not only improves performance, but makes Qube! scalable to virtually any size production.
Event-driven queuing
Event-driven queuing is the technology underlying the Qube! Supervisor. This event-driven architecture provides instantaneous response to job submission and dispatch to workers. In addition, the event-model supports the attachment of arbitrary callbacks via the Qube! API for unlimited customization options. Events can then trigger other events or external interactions with applications.
Custom job types
Qube! comes with a number of application pipelines, including Maya, Softimage, 3ds Max, and Nuke. Each pipeline contains a submission form for the Qube! GUI, a command line submission tool, a submission GUI integrated into the application itself, and a backend execution module specifically developed to maximize job-processing efficiency. The custom pipelines reduce the time for integrating internal production pipelines with Qube! by including ready-made interfaces and execution backends.
Numeric priority
Jobs can be assigned a numeric priority. Jobs with the higher priority will run ahead of jobs with lower priority, which minimizes production bottlenecks and ensures that the system handles the important jobs first.
Host clustering priority
Hosts can be grouped into hierarchies called ?clusters.? Jobs that are submitted to a particular level of the hierarchy will have higher priority than jobs submitted to a different level, thereby maximizing the efficiency of the farm while maintaining host allocations between departments or projects.
Priority-based preemption
Jobs running at low priority can be preempted by jobs with higher priority. Depending upon configuration, jobs will be placed back into the queue for later dispatch immediately or when they finish the frame they were working on. This ensures that only the highest priority jobs are running. Additionally, this enables Qube! to quickly adjust when work priorities change.
Centralized worker configuration
The Supervisor controls the configuration of each worker via a single freeform configuration file that enables workers to be updated with a single administrative command. This saves time and effort and makes the modification of worker configuration much easier to maintain.
Worker locking
Worker locking provides a mechanism by which desktops can be added to the farm at a moments notice, or by a set schedule, or even when they?re not in use.
Global resources
Global resources keep track of arbitrary resources across entire systems. By configuring the system to monitor and allocate a global resource, jobs can be constrained without the loss of rendering due to application failure.
Customizable GUI application
The Qube! GUI interface is a powerful, customizable multi-purpose tool for users and administrators. It is used to monitor and control jobs, and (for administrators) to lock and unlock render farm hosts. Operating Qube! from a common GUI helps creative teams stay productive as users do not have to learn command line tools to use the system.
Worker heartbeat
Each worker automatically pings the Supervisor at regular intervals in order to report status. The Supervisor uses this information to keep a list of ?live? hosts to which it can send jobs. Administrators do not need to configure the Supervisor with explicit lists of hosts. The Supervisor can also report hosts as ?down? when it misses a worker heartbeat. This makes it easier for administrators to keep up-to-the-minute tabs on the state of the farm.
Offline host reacquisition
The Supervisor will periodically update the state of all hosts automatically, and re-acquire hosts that have not checked in for some time. This saves time for busy administrators.
User-based permissions
Individual users can be granted or denied the various Qube! capabilities, such as job manipulation. This important security feature prevents users from manipulating or even killing other users? jobs.
Windows drive mapping
Qube! analyzes the drive mappings at submit time, stores them with the job, and when the job executes, automatically creates the same mappings on the workers. This feature is useful to sites that establish different drive maps for each user. Files don?t need to be copied to specific drives mapped on the render farm machines ? they can remain on the drives mapped on each user?s workstations instead.
iPad/iPhone Charting and Reports
Monitor your render farm on iPad and iPhone while outside the network with Roambi Pro, an innovative mobile application that transforms boring render data reports into engaging, interactive mobile dashboards. Mobile users can view, analyze, interact with, and share their information as well as store, manage and refresh their files ? right from the palms of their hands. Critical render pipeline information including farm pending load, utilization over time, render times per project or user, and user comparisons are immediately accessible. Stuck in a meeting with no vpn access to your farm? Just check your iPhone or iPad and gain insight into your entire render pipeline.
Latest New Features in 6.6
PipelineFX video channel with all the lastest videos (including 6.7 and 6.8 betas)
*New Subscription Licensing*
You can now purchase Qube! Unlimited licenses on a month-to-month basis under "Qube! Subscription Licensing." The unique flexibility of this licensing model helps studios and organizations ramp up to meet project demands, or manage cash constrained operating expenses by paying for software licenses only when they are needed.
Real Cross Platform Support
Qube! was built in Square USA’s Final Fantasy production studio designed from the beginning to run on Windows, OSX and Linux platforms. Full functionality and performance is included across all three platforms. Choose any for the Supervisor and use any or all for the Workers and submission Clients.
Multi-threaded Supervisor
At the heart of Qube! is a multi-threaded Supervisor with the ability to manage thousands of jobs simultaneously. The multi-threaded architecture is highly-available, low-maintenance, and extremely stable. Adding more threads to the Supervisor not only improves performance, but makes Qube! scalable to virtually any size production.
Event-driven queuing
Event-driven queuing is the technology underlying the Qube! Supervisor. This event-driven architecture provides instantaneous response to job submission and dispatch to workers. In addition, the event-model supports the attachment of arbitrary callbacks via the Qube! API for unlimited customization options. Events can then trigger other events or external interactions with applications.
Custom job types
Qube! comes with a number of application pipelines, including Maya, Softimage, 3ds Max, and Nuke. Each pipeline contains a submission form for the Qube! GUI, a command line submission tool, a submission GUI integrated into the application itself, and a backend execution module specifically developed to maximize job-processing efficiency. The custom pipelines reduce the time for integrating internal production pipelines with Qube! by including ready-made interfaces and execution backends.
Numeric priority
Jobs can be assigned a numeric priority. Jobs with the higher priority will run ahead of jobs with lower priority, which minimizes production bottlenecks and ensures that the system handles the important jobs first.
Host clustering priority
Hosts can be grouped into hierarchies called ?clusters.? Jobs that are submitted to a particular level of the hierarchy will have higher priority than jobs submitted to a different level, thereby maximizing the efficiency of the farm while maintaining host allocations between departments or projects.
Priority-based preemption
Jobs running at low priority can be preempted by jobs with higher priority. Depending upon configuration, jobs will be placed back into the queue for later dispatch immediately or when they finish the frame they were working on. This ensures that only the highest priority jobs are running. Additionally, this enables Qube! to quickly adjust when work priorities change.
Centralized worker configuration
The Supervisor controls the configuration of each worker via a single freeform configuration file that enables workers to be updated with a single administrative command. This saves time and effort and makes the modification of worker configuration much easier to maintain.
Worker locking
Worker locking provides a mechanism by which desktops can be added to the farm at a moments notice, or by a set schedule, or even when they?re not in use.
Global resources
Global resources keep track of arbitrary resources across entire systems. By configuring the system to monitor and allocate a global resource, jobs can be constrained without the loss of rendering due to application failure.
Customizable GUI application
The Qube! GUI interface is a powerful, customizable multi-purpose tool for users and administrators. It is used to monitor and control jobs, and (for administrators) to lock and unlock render farm hosts. Operating Qube! from a common GUI helps creative teams stay productive as users do not have to learn command line tools to use the system.
Worker heartbeat
Each worker automatically pings the Supervisor at regular intervals in order to report status. The Supervisor uses this information to keep a list of ?live? hosts to which it can send jobs. Administrators do not need to configure the Supervisor with explicit lists of hosts. The Supervisor can also report hosts as ?down? when it misses a worker heartbeat. This makes it easier for administrators to keep up-to-the-minute tabs on the state of the farm.
Offline host reacquisition
The Supervisor will periodically update the state of all hosts automatically, and re-acquire hosts that have not checked in for some time. This saves time for busy administrators.
User-based permissions
Individual users can be granted or denied the various Qube! capabilities, such as job manipulation. This important security feature prevents users from manipulating or even killing other users? jobs.
Windows drive mapping
Qube! analyzes the drive mappings at submit time, stores them with the job, and when the job executes, automatically creates the same mappings on the workers. This feature is useful to sites that establish different drive maps for each user. Files don?t need to be copied to specific drives mapped on the render farm machines ? they can remain on the drives mapped on each user?s workstations instead.
iPad/iPhone Charting and Reports
Monitor your render farm on iPad and iPhone while outside the network with Roambi Pro, an innovative mobile application that transforms boring render data reports into engaging, interactive mobile dashboards. Mobile users can view, analyze, interact with, and share their information as well as store, manage and refresh their files ? right from the palms of their hands. Critical render pipeline information including farm pending load, utilization over time, render times per project or user, and user comparisons are immediately accessible. Stuck in a meeting with no vpn access to your farm? Just check your iPhone or iPad and gain insight into your entire render pipeline.