Network rendering solution

[derelict]

as far as i've read... maya and max is different when it comes to networking ( i may be wrong here)
u see maya needs an editional software for it, while max has a build in.

[Carnifex]

I keep thinking that it should be possible to do if there was a way of clustering all the machines on the network. I tried briefly to look into clustering under windows but the free solutions all seemed very complex and woefully under documented.

[elvis]

clustering under windows is non-existend. windows 2000 advanced server has a clustering system, but it is designed for high availability, not high performance.

the easiest clustering for linux is the openmosix project (www.openmosix.org).

your best bet for simplicity (in max at least) is to just install the network rendering features that come with it natively.

[Carnifex]

There are actually quite a few available solutions for clustering under windows.
And a lot of them are free. The only problem I found with them were that they seemed to have very little in the way of documentation, making it nigh impossible to set up for an average user.

[elvis]

got some websites/links you can post? i'd be interested in having a go at a few of them.

[Carnifex]

Arrgh, ehm, not right off the top of my head. I found em by doing a google search for "Clustering under Windows" without the quotation marks and that led me to a host of websites...


Oops, I almost forgot. I do have one.

www.windowsclusters.org

That should be a good portal for it.

[dvornik]

How about Virtual Vertex Muster for Maya? Sounds just like what we need. Or Smedge?

[elvis]

Originally posted by Carnifex

Oops, I almost forgot. I do have one.

www.windowsclusters.org

That should be a good portal for it.
alot of the sites that this links to are very theoretical. most of the clustering technologies presented are VERY application specific, and typically written and compiled by the people who use/make/need that particular cluster.

easy to use high-performance windows clustering is still a couple of years off. high availability clustering is available today, but doesn't achieve the same goal.

for now the only real (and cheap) alternative is something like linux+openmosix (+ltsp if needed). for all intents and purposes openmosix is a virtual wrapper around a standard linux install so that any process can see the whole cluster as a large SMP solution. that kind of technology is what people like you and i want, as we typically run a variety of software that could all make very good use of a generic distibuted solution for speed gains rather than fail-over.

[Carnifex]

I would tend to agree. Atleast as far as the free solutions go. For obvious reasons I have not been able to test out any of the options that cost money, so I can't really make any judgment about them.

What you describe with Linux+Openmosix is exactly what I was looking for, but it doesn't apply much to my current choice of programs as they are all pretty much strictly windows.

With the one exception probably being Cinema 4D, but I am not gonna go and pay my own money for a mac version that would do me no good what so ever.

The only real solution currently is to try and do it with WINE, but I don't think the performance deficit that WINE induces would make it worth it.

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