Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 119(e), this application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/878,679, filed Jul. 25, 2019, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

A computer-generated animation is typically created by rendering a sequence of images, with each image depicting a computer-generated scene composed of one or more computer-generated assets (e.g., a character, a group of characters, an environment, an effect, or a lighting rig). During an interactive session for rendering a scene, an artist may use one or more tools to change aspects or conditions of the scene. For example, a lighting artist may use a lighting tool to change conditions of the scene. According to the changes initiated by the artist, each of one or more rendering engines may render an image depicting the scene and send intermediate snapshots of the rendering results to a front-end client. These intermediate snapshots may be sent at particular time intervals. The front-end client controls a display of the snapshots, e.g., at a monitor. The artist may then evaluate progressive results of the changes that he or she had initiated, as the scene is rendered.