WranglerView is a fully loaded interface with a light color scheme that is intended for use by advanced users, render wranglers, and/or administrators. WranglerView is built on WxPython.
On the Mac and Windows desktops, it is a color Qube! icon.
In Linux, it is launched by typing
$ qube
at the prompt (without the $ prompt, of course).
In this guide, we are going to look at some specific features that you as a render wrangler may want to take advantage of.
Customize the Interface
Qube! allows you to customize the WranglerView UI and then have your artists use that customized view. The larger your user base, the more likely it is that you will want to do this, in order to minimize support calls from your users who have wandered into an unfamiliar area of the UI. You also want to take away opportunities for accidents or performance problems caused by people clicking around in areas better reserved for Admins. Here are some suggestions:
In Preferences, in the Display Filtering section, turn off the Admin menu, The User Permissions tab, and the Performance Charts tab. Also, in Show Job Submissions, it says <ALL> at the top - turn that off. Then turn on only the job submission types that you actually use in your facility. This will dramatically clean up the user's submission menu. All of these options are covered in detail in the WranglerView Preferences page.
Once you've done this, save these preferences as a file somewhere on the network that users can access, and then coerce your users into using it. Currently, they have to load it themselves, but you can get around this with environment variables and/or wrapper scripts - the Preferences page has more details.
Monitoring the Farm
You can use the Workers Tab to find machines that are idle or which are repeatedly failing jobs.
You can use the Performance Charts to monitor the health of the overall farm, including the speed at which jobs are picked up and assigned after they are submitted. It is a good idea to watch this during peak periods, in order to try to alleviate problems before users notice and complain about them.
User Permissions
The User Permissions Tab allows you to check and change the groups the users are in and the permissions that they have. These are not operating system groups, they are local to Qube! and can be helpful in managing people and resources.
Resources
You may wish to have Qube! track global facility resources, most notably software licenses. You can have these configured in various ways - details are given in the System-Wide Resource Tracking page. You can then follow the current use of these resources in the appropriate Performance Chart.