CGTalk - Network rendering

dvornik

12-13-2002, 08:50 PM

We are a school and we are looking for a centralised distributed rendering solution for max and Maya that would take advantage of the idle workstations. We are considering Muster 3 for Maya - it appears to have all the features we need, including scheduling.

Is there a solution that would work for both programs? I was told that if max supported command line rendering it could work with Muster. I don't think i does, does it?

Backburner for all I know does not support scheduling and would require some expertise (that I don't have) to be automatically launched and shut down on remote workstations at scheduled times.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

FaceMn

12-13-2002, 09:29 PM

Max indeed does not support command line rendering. Who knows if they ever will. It would sure be nice though.

Anyway, if you want scheduled times for the servers to run on your workstations, you could set up a scheduled task in Windows 2000 (assuming you are using that OS) on each machine. I'm not sure if WinXP has scheduled tasks or not, but I'm sure it does.

You could also set up the Server as a service. We have the manager set up on one of our servers as a service and tell the service to auto restart if it fails. Works very nice.

The project I am on, my team and I use Maya. For the distributed rendering, we use Smedge. I'm not really sure on the technical specifics of it, but I know it will render just about every 3D package out there EXCEPT for MAX. Go figure.

Hope this helps,

Jason

dvornik

12-13-2002, 09:45 PM

Thanks, Jason. We run Windows 2000. Smedge is indeed another option we are considering. Muster features list mentioned scheduling and assigning rights to users, that's why we want to try it first.

I will think more about backburner solution - it seems like even if it's possible it's still hard to manage and rather decentralized. At the same time I could remotely schedule tasks with WinAT, so I will consider your idea.

[edit] Smedge supports clients scheduling as well, so it's definitely another package we are looking into.

Serge.

CGTalk Moderation

01-14-2006, 12:00 AM

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.