• Introduction
• OpenCue features
• Learn more
• Quick installation and tests
• OpenCue full installation
• OpenCue documentation
• Meeting notes
• Contributors
• Contact us

Introduction

OpenCue is an open source render management system. You can use OpenCue in visual effects and animation production to break down complex jobs into individual tasks. You can submit jobs to a configurable dispatch queue that allocates the necessary computational resources.

OpenCue features

OpenCue provides the following features to help manage rendering jobs at scale:

• Sony Pictures Imageworks in-house render manager used on hundreds of films.
• Highly-scalable architecture supporting numerous concurrent machines.
• Tagging systems allow you to allocate specific jobs to specific machine types.
• Jobs are processed on a central render farm and don't rely on the artist's workstation.
• Native multi-threading that supports Katana, Prman, and Arnold.
• Support for multi facility, on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments.
• You can split a host into a large number of procs, each with their own reserved core and memory requirements.
• Integrated automated booking.
• No limit on the number of procs a job can have.

Learn more

For more information on installing, using, and administering OpenCue, visit www.opencue.io.

Watch YouTube videos on the OpenCue Playlist of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) to learn more.

Quick installation and tests

Docker Compose

A local environment can be easily launched using Docker Compose:

# Prerequisites
mkdir -p /tmp/rqd/logs /tmp/rqd/shots

# Start core services (db, flyway, cuebot, rqd)
docker compose up -d

# Check status
docker compose ps

Optional components are managed via Docker Compose profiles:

# Enable Web UI and monitoring
docker compose --profile cueweb --profile monitoring up -d

# Enable all services
docker compose --profile all up -d

# Stop all profiles (recommended to ensure everything is brought down)
docker compose --profile all down

See the docker-compose.yml header for detailed instructions and access endpoints.

Sandbox Environment

Read the OpenCue sandbox documentation to learn more about the sandbox environment.

• The sandbox environment offers an easy way to run a test OpenCue deployment locally, with all components running in separate Docker containers or Python virtual environments.
• It is ideal for small tests, development work, and for those new to OpenCue who want a simple setup for experimentation and learning.

To learn how to run the sandbox environment, see the OpenCue Quick Starts documentation.

OpenCue full installation

Guides for system admins deploying OpenCue components and installing dependencies are available in the OpenCue Documentation - Getting Started.

OpenCue documentation

OpenCue documentation is built with Jekyll and hosted on GitHub Pages. The documentation includes installation guides, user guides, API references, and tutorials to help users get started with OpenCue.

When contributing to OpenCue, please update the documentation for any new features or changes. Each pull request should include relevant documentation updates when applicable.

Building and Testing Documentation

If you make changes to OpenCue/docs, please build and test the documentation before submitting your PR:

1. Build and validate the documentation bash ./docs/build.sh

2. Install bundler binstubs (if needed)

If you encounter permission errors when installing to system directories: bash cd docs/ bundle binstubs --all

1. Run the documentation locally bash cd docs/ bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload

2. Preview the documentation

Open http://localhost:4000 in your browser to review your changes.

For detailed documentation setup instructions, testing procedures, and contribution guidelines, see docs/README.md.

Note: Once your pull request is merged into master, the documentation will be automatically deployed via GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/docs.yml). The updated documentation will be available at https://docs.opencue.io/.

The OpenCue documentation is now available at https://docs.opencue.io/.

Meeting notes

Starting from May 2024, all OpenCue meeting notes are stored on the OpenCue Confluence page.

For meeting notes before May 2024, please refer to the OpenCue repository in the opencue/tsc/meetings folder.

Contributors

Contact us

Join the #opencue channel on the ASWF Slack, the main space where contributors and users collaborate.

Working Group meets biweekly at 2pm PST on Zoom.

To join the OpenCue discussion forum for users and admins, join the opencue-user mailing list or email the group directly at opencue-user@lists.aswf.io.