Test with linked objects and materials.

[e-crins]

I tried to render a .blend file with one linked (DNA) and one local object (Cube).
Using Cycles on a 3 node Standard A1 machines running Ubuntu (I run Windows 10 local machine)
The job was started from Blender 2.78a (will try 2.78b next time).
Jobs on node seemed fine (it uploaded all linked .blend files)
But the result seemed to be missing stuff.
Azure result:

Local result:

Files on Node:

Next test was with all elements made 'local'.
It took a bit longer to render on the A1 CPU then on my local 580 GPU, but the result was fine!

Any tips on what to do with linked files/ elements?

[annatisch]

@e-crins,
I suspect this is a matter of redirecting the paths in Blender before starting the render to make sure Blender tries to load the external data from the current working directory.
This is a change that would need to be made in render.py prior to the render commands.

I'll try and take a look at adding that feature this weekend.

[annatisch]

@e-crins,
I've just pushed a fix to render.py to support server-side asset redirection. This includes redirecting the paths of linked libraries then reloading the scene file to update the references. I did a quick test and it seems to work okay.

To get these latest changes you could either re-sync your code, or just get the latest copy of render.py and overwrite your existing one in batched_blender/scripts

Let me know how it goes :)

[e-crins]

Did a new simple test.
No success...

I looked at my Azure pool during the test. No activity in the nodes...

linked cubes (from same folder) and sphere's (from another drive on the laptop)
Planes are not linked. All materials but the lamp material are linked.

[e-crins]

And I did a new test with just 'local cubes'. This worked fine!
Spoke too soon. Everything uploaded fine, but no render result in the container....
What should I put in the render output setting in Blender?

[e-crins]

@annatisch.
Do you have any tips on what to try next? Is there any updates?
Still looking forward to using Azure Batch with this plugin.