Starting the Network Rendering System


You can finally put all your hard work into action. We're ready to start up your network rendering system.

Tutorial: Initializing the network rendering system

The very first time you start your rendering farm, you need to help Max do a little initialization. To initialize the network rendering system, follow these steps

  1. Start the network manager on one machine in your rendering farm. This program, Manager.exe, is in the backburner directory. You can start the manager by selecting it and pressing Enter in Windows Explorer. After it starts up, you first see the backburner Manager General Properties dialog box. This dialog box appears only the first time you run the Manager.exe program or if you choose Edit image from book General Settings. I cover its settings later in the chapter. After setting these properties, click the OK button, and the Manager window, shown in Figure 46.8, runs.

    image from book
    Figure 46-8: Starting the network manager

  2. Now start a network server on each computer that you plan to use for rendering. To do this, find and start the Server.exe program just like you did with Manager.exe. When you start this program for the first time, the backburner Server General Properties dialog box appears. This dialog box is covered later in the chapter. Click OK, and the Network Server window appears, as shown in Figure 46.9.

image from book
Figure 46-9: Starting a network server. Notice that the server is already looking for the manager.

When the server finds the manager, it displays a message that the registration is accepted. The Network Manager window also shows a similar message.

If the server had trouble connecting to the manager, you need to follow these two additional steps

  1. If automatic detection of the manager fails, the server keeps trying until it times out. If it times out, or if you just get tired of waiting, choose Edit image from book General Settings to open the backburner Server General Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 46.10. In this dialog box, uncheck the Automatic Search box and type in the name or IP address of the computer that is running the network manager. In this case, the server tried but couldn't quite find the manager, so it had to be told that the manager was running on the computer whose IP address is 150.150.150.150.

    image from book
    Figure 46-10: Manually choosing the manager's IP address

  2. Click OK to close the backburner Server General Properties dialog box, and then click Close to shut down the server (doing so forces the server to save the changes you've made). Restart the server the same way you did before, and now the server and manager are able to find each other.

Note 

The network manager does not need to have a computer all to itself, so you can also run a net-work server on the same computer and use it to participate in the rendering.

Tutorial: Completing your first network rendering job

Your rendering farm is up and running and just dying to render something, so let's put those machines to work. To start a network rendering job, follow these steps

  1. Start Max, and create a simple animation scene.

    This should be as simple as possible because all we're doing here is verifying that the rendering farm is functional.

  2. In Max, choose Rendering image from book Render (F10) to bring up the Render Scene dialog box. In the Time Output section of this dialog box, be sure that Range is selected so that you really do render multiple frames instead of the default single frame.

  3. In the Render Output section of the Render Scene dialog box, click Files to open the Render Output File dialog box. In the Save In section, choose the output drive and directory that you created in the "Configuring shared directories" section.

  4. In the File name section of the Render Output File dialog box, type the name of the first frame. Max automatically numbers each frame for you. Choose a bitmap format from the Save as type list (remember, an animation format will not work).

  5. Click Save to close the Render Output File dialog box. (Some file formats might ask you for additional information for your files; if so, just click OK to accept the default options.) Back in the Render Scene dialog box, Max displays the full path to the output directory.

  6. In the Render Output section of the Render Scene dialog box, check the Net Render option, as shown in Figure 46.11. Change any other settings you want, such as selecting a viewport, and then click Render.

    image from book
    Figure 46-11: The Net Render option must be enabled to start a network rendering job.

    A Network Job Assignment dialog box opens, like the one shown in Figure 46.12.

    image from book
    Figure 46-12: Using the Network Job Assignment dialog box to locate the manager to handle the rendering job

  7. In the Enter Subnet section of the Network Job Assignment dialog box, click Connect if the Automatic Search box is checked. If it isn't checked, or if your servers had trouble finding the manager in the "Initializing the network rendering system" tutorial earlier in this chapter, type the IP address of the machine that's running the manager and then click Connect.

  8. Max then searches for any available rendering servers, connects with it, and adds its name to the list of available servers. Click the server name once, and click Submit.

Tip 

If you try to submit the same job again (after either a failed or a successful attempt at rendering), Max complains because that job already exists in the job queue. You can remove the job using the Monitor, or you can click the + button on the Network Job Assignment dialog box, and Max adds a number to the job name to make it unique.

After you've submitted your job, notices appear on the manager and the servers (like the ones shown in Figures 46.13 and 46.14) that the job has been received. Soon Max starts up on each server, and you see a Rendering dialog box showing the progress of the rendering task. As you can see, this displays useful information such as what frame is being rendered and how long the job is taking. When the entire animation has been rendered, you can go to your output directory to get the bitmap files that Max generated. The render servers and the render manager keep running, ready for the next job request to come in.

image from book
Figure 46-13: The network manager detects the new job.

image from book
Figure 46-14: One of the network servers receives the command to start a new job.

Job assignment options

The Network Job Assignment dialog box, shown previously in Figure 46.12, has an important section that we didn't use for our first simple render job; it's called Options.

The Options section has the following settings:

  • Enable Notifications: Lets you tell Max when to notify you that certain events have occurred. If you check the Enable Notifications option, the Define button becomes active. The Define button opens a Notifications dialog box, shown in Figure 46.15.

    image from book
    Figure 46-15: The Notifications dialog box lets you specify which type of notifications to receive.

  • Split Scan Lines: This option breaks a rendered image into strips that can be rendered separately. The Define button lets you specify the Strip Height, Number of Strips, and any Overlap.

  • Use All Servers: This option makes all servers listed in the Server panel fair game for rendering. To select only specific servers, disable this option and select the servers to use.

  • Ignore Scene Path: Use this option to force the servers to retrieve the scene file via TCP/IP. If disabled, the manager copies the scene file to the server.

  • Rendered Frame Window: Use this option if you want to be able to see the image on the server as it gets rendered.

  • Include Maps: Checking this box makes Max compress everything that it needs to render the scene (including the maps) into a single file and send it to each server. This option is useful if you're setting up a rendering farm over the Internet, although it takes more time and network bandwidth to send all that extra information.

  • Initially Suspended: This option pauses the rendering before it starts so that you can manually start it when the network is ready.

  • Use Alternate Path File: This option lets you specify an alternate path for map and other files, which is entered in the field below.




3ds Max 9 Bible
3ds Max 9 Bible
ISBN: 0470100893
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 383

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