Problem NET rendering bitmap texture maps.

[dann_stubbs]

I'm sure this is a very basic question. I'm new to C4D (but not to 3D).

I've got my NET Render Clients set up and working great.

However, I'm getting errors when I use externally created bitmap textures (JPEGs, TIFFs, PNGs, etc). I get an error that the Clients can't find any of the image files that I've used.

It renders fine inside Picture Viewer, so I know my texture maps are applied correctly.

Is there a way to embed the image files inside the .c4d file? How do I get my project to network render correctly?

I'd appreciate any help for this newb. :)

you can't use full paths to the textures i.e. if your paths look like C:/HD/yourstuff/documents/textures/pics/ etc... (of course not accurate to your paths) when using textures because that path will not exist on NET

you need to upload all your textures as well as your scene to the NET Server to render (what i am guessing is wrong)

you can just copy the whole project folder over to your machine that is acting as your NET Server (inside the C4D folder is a users directory inside that will be the users folders for the accounts you have made - just copy the whole project folder there and then NET can see it and access the textures and scenes for passing out to the NET clients)

dann

[Navstar]

Yes, that seems to have done it! Thanks! I moved my project folder into the Cinema4D User folder and it automatically appeared in the NET Server web page. All I had to do was click 'start'.

Are there any 'gotchas' I need to be careful of? Like spaces or illegal characters in texture files names, Quicktime movies as texture maps, or file size restrictions?

(On a side note, I notice NET Server is taking a ton of CPU cycles. Activity Monitor shows 150% on my dual G5 2.5 GHz tower. Is that normal? My previous experience has been that render servers are pretty low-cycle applications.)

[dann_stubbs]

Yes, that seems to have done it! Thanks! I moved my project folder into the Cinema4D User folder and it automatically appeared in the NET Server web page. All I had to do was click 'start'.

Are there any 'gotchas' I need to be careful of? Like spaces or illegal characters in texture files names, Quicktime movies as texture maps, or file size restrictions?

(On a side note, I notice NET Server is taking a ton of CPU cycles. Activity Monitor shows 150% on my dual G5 2.5 GHz tower. Is that normal? My previous experience has been that render servers are pretty low-cycle applications.)

as long as you are on the same platform (i.e. all mac or all PC) naming is not as much of an issue - but it is good practice to avoid fancy characters, excessively long filnames, and other poor file naming practices.

NET Server does all the data sending back and forth as well as the file converstion from the render b3d format to the final end format (i.e. tiff, PNG, jpg etc) so there is a bit more overhead from that activity

but - the main issue is just the PPC build is a processor hog - it will routinely max the CPU's and saving PNG or multi-pass PSD (especially large format renders) will pin the process and can make the whole machine unresponsive for a long time - it has been a big peeve of mine since R10 and i've even moved some NET Server activity on my farm to PC because of it (which is annoying since the unix control of a server is much nicer)

hopefully some bug fix someday will implement a new compile that fixes the PPC build - it also has some other issues such as phantom clients appearing and disappearing (visible in the NET Server client window) where you can see some typo or something causing mangled IP or DNS names of phantom clients.

but in a light duty use like yours these should not be show stoppers - it does get progressively worse with more and faster NET clients.

dann

[Navstar]

Thanks for the tips!

I'll be glad when I can get an Intel Mac.

So what would make a better Net Server -- an old slow single CPU computer sitting in the closet, or a super speedy Quad Core workstation that would be running a copy of Client also?

[Srek]

Personaly i would use a mid range system with a fast network connection and sufficent harddisk capacity. Using a to old system might cripple over all performance if the server is not able to serve all connected clients in reasonable time.
It's recommended to not run a client on the server, but if you have way enough RAM and some cores to spare it should work fine, you might think about giving the server a higher priority (OS setting) to ensure it's availablity to other clients.
Cheers
Björn

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