Requre URGENT help with net render

[moshe z.]

uoy can't render avi on defrent computers u have to render squence of images and then u can use the manager
after u render take the sequence into premier or AFX and make the avi

cheers
MZ

[shocky]

Okie. I have 3 quesntions

1. How do I render the animation into a sequence of images? Which image format do you recommand? Newbie here, please explain :)

2. Why can't I use the "Use All Servers" option?

3. Does many computers render the same frame or does each server render its own frame?

[shocky]

Hmm.. I've figured out qusetion 1 and 2.... Rendering a sequence of iamges solved the problem... that leaves question 3... :P

[Iain McFadzen]

1) Render to a 24 bit colour lossless format such as tga or tiff, these are still image formats so they will automatically render sequencially numbered stills. If you need an alpha channel render to 32bit and tick the appropriate option. There are also rich pixel formats such as .rla and .rpf which allow you to add extra effects channels (such as Z-depth) but it doesn't sound like you need anything that complicated.

2) Because you have chosen to render to avi, which cannot be done by more than one machine.

3) No, that's the whole point of network rendering. The manager machine "farms out" each frame in turn to each of the servers who then render it. Servers can drop out of or join the queue without the manager missing a frame.

[shocky]

I see. What happens if a server while rendering a frame crashes, then can the rendering of that frame be resumed or does it have to be rerendered?

[moshe z.]

if a server will fall, automaticly the manger will know and repost the frame to a deferent server

i would render jpg, since the animation will be in AVI it will compress anyway and tiff will whight 10 times the jpg

[Equinoxx]

that's just it moshe.z . . . since it will be compressed you want to start out with an uncompressed source . . . cuase double compression will be YUCK . . .

also good to remember,is that the output path of your render will have to be the same on all renderslaves . . . so if you render to E:/render, each renderslave has to ahve the same drive & folder on the drive . . .

or you could choose to have the output path as ../network/workgroup/mycomputer/e drive/render, but the problem there is that windows doesn't allow more then 4 simultanious connections to 1 computer, unless you're running win2k server . . .

[Marcel]

> that's just it moshe.z . . . since it will be compressed you want > to start out with an uncompressed source . . . cuase double > >compression will be YUCK . .

I've rendered dozens of image sequences to JPG, if you keep the quality at 100% you won't see a thing. The only artefacts you will see are color bleeding at very sharp edges (un-antialiased edges against bright colored backgrounds), but assuming you will also render alpha maps that won't be much of a problem.

Hey shocky, I thought your rendertimes were down to 1 minute per frame, why do you need all the renderpower?

Marcel

[Equinoxx]

Originally posted by Marcel
I've rendered dozens of image sequences to JPG, if you keep the quality at 100% you won't see a thing. The only artefacts you will see are color bleeding at very sharp edges

why render to a compressed output when it's just as easy to render to a lossless output . . .

it's beyond me . . . you'lll probably have your reasons but still . . .

[Marcel]

why render to a compressed output when it's just as easy to render to a lossless output . . .

it's beyond me . . . you'lll probably have your reasons but still . . .

Because it saves hard disk space. :p
It's just usefull when 12 projects can remain on your harddisk instead of 4.

And because it's easier to put on CD if you need to send it to someone else. (When the JPG sequences already take 4 CD, I don't want to know how much the TGA sequences do).

The TGA sequences do have another advantage, they load much faster into the RAM player for example.

Marcel

[CGTalk Moderation]

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.