single or a rendering farm?

[BuddyB309]

I was wondering how other teams are rendering. Are you using one computer or an couple of computers? Our programmer set me up a rendering farm that consist of 12 COMPUTERS ALL USING BACK BURNER. Its amazing :D . don't ask me how he did it, i don't know.

[animator1]

i've just used one machine(my laptop) and rendered multiple scenes rather that one whole one. Each scene(3) took about 30 mins. each. Not too bad.

[Capt.ArD]

our school network won't allow backburner, don't know why. we are using 4 home computers to render. but wow, the entire animation put together ill take 50+ hours to render. it's insane.

[jfelser]

I've used backburner2 in the past, but for my purposes this year (heavily optimized render times ~30 s for frame over the whole anim) I just used one comp, overnight.

[Corporat]

I think we're rendering on one of our team member's home computer. It's a Dell XPS. It renders about twice as fast as our school computers (although we haven't rendered anything big yet).

[Koko Ed]

I was wondering how other teams are rendering. Are you using one computer or an couple of computers? Our programmer set me up a rendering farm that consist of 12 COMPUTERS ALL USING BACK BURNER. Its amazing :D . don't ask me how he did it, i don't know.
I render individual scenes on one of our three animation computers and do the final editing on Adobe Pemeire and render it form there.

[BuddyB309]

Wow!! my animations rendered and done! this network i had set up was kicking! I never thought i could pull this off in time but my main set has a reflective and refractive glass stair case, A reflective black marble stage, Ink and paint characters, 50 lights, motion blur, a grassy field, and to top it all of RADIOSITY!!!!!! I'm so happy. :D This thing just took one weekend. I'm going to blow the judges out of their seats. :D

[663.keith]

Our rendering time per frame is 7-45 min. needless to say that with 900 frames we are still rendering, but are almost done.

we are rendering our animation 3 different computers, one of those is a dual core Pentium processor :cool:

[Mr.Fraggs]

well for team116 we ran into trouble as phil mentioned the school wont allow us to use backburner. so now im rendering this from our own computers the whole scene 1 takes 46 hours bla bla bla

gl everyone dont crash servers like we did last year

[Capt.ArD]

hey, we can't really PROVE that WE did it...
it just... happened at the same time as we were rendering last year. could've been anybody's fault :D

but anyway, rendering has got to be one of the most stressfull things ever. 50+ hours for 1 scene in our animation is ridiculous. I really suggest everyone use backburner or get a few dual-core processors to render if you can.

[BruceJ]

My quick guide to network rendering.
If I missed anything, please feel free to post a correction.

-------------------------------


Here are the basic steps to set up a rendering farm:

Create a directory somewhere that you're sure all computers on the network can access by using Windows sharing. Log in to each computer and be sure you can create new files in that directory or drive.

Copy the standard materials and maps from 3ds max to that location and any special materials you may have created (downloaded images, etc.)

Install 3ds max on each computer as a basic installation (don't need to install help files, etc. except for the main computer)
You only need to authorize the copy on the main computer also.
If you don't authorize the other copies and therefore cannot run 3ds max on the server machines, you may need to edit the 3dsmax.ini file to change the directory paths where materials are located. Otherwise, you can change these in the preferences when you run the program. (customize -> configure user paths)

Create a directory where the rendered frames will go in your common/shared location.

You will need to render the scene as numbered stills (scene001.tga, scene002.tga, etc.) because that's how the work is divided among the computers.

In the Windows start menu under 3ds max, you will see 3 backburner programs.
On the main computer, run the backburner manager.
On the other computers, run the backburner server.
On the main computer, run the backburner monitor.

The manager program will get responses from the server programs if they are on the network and collect which computers are available for rendering.

In the monitor program, connect to the manager program to be able to track the render progress.

If you want the main computer to render also, then run the backburner server program on the main computer as well.

In 3ds max, go to the render menu and select "net render".

Now, when you are ready to render your scene, the manager should split up the frames among any running servers and you should be able to track the progress using the backburner monitor program.

Also, 3ds max has in-program help files where you can look under the section for "3ds max reference -> rendering -> network rendering"

[Walkin Stummik]

hmmph. *Glares jealously*
Considering that I am the sole animator for my team, I've got acsess to ONE computer, with ONE mind and only TEN fingers to do it with. It's gonna take FOREVER to render my stuff. The enviro isn't even complete yet. and it still took almost an hour to render 3-4 seconds of a test animation.
*Prays fervently*
I just hope I can get it done in time

[vadyr]

we use a 6 computer render farm (5 when my laptop isnt here)...but they are all brand new computers so it goes lightning fast. we actually just rendered some scenes today that came out nicely :)

[Astrophizz]

I've never really counted, but I believe our team has a farm of something like 20 p4s, though I may be guessing too low. Thanks to Dell for the donation :cool: .

[vadyr]

I've never really counted, but I believe our team has a farm of something like 20 p4s, though I may be guessing too low. Thanks to Dell for the donation :cool: .


20 p4's? are they good p4's with a lot of ram? we are hoping to get a server next year with 8 gigs of ram and dual xeons to do most of our rendering for us :)

[Kevin Thorp]

Bruce - We can't seem to get Backburner to work. I'm the mentor but one of my students who knows a little more about networking attempted the set it up.

He got the main computer to recognize the "slave" computers but received this error message: "No plugin provided for job submission" (I might not have the exact wording). He tried removing & reinstalling Backburner, and following the instructions you posted on this forum, but received the same message.

Any suggestions?

[Walkin Stummik]

Nope. Never had the oppertunity to work with a rendering farm or other animators or any other helpful thing. :(

[vadyr]

Bruce - We can't seem to get Backburner to work. I'm the mentor but one of my students who knows a little more about networking attempted the set it up.

He got the main computer to recognize the "slave" computers but received this error message: "No plugin provided for job submission" (I might not have the exact wording). He tried removing & reinstalling Backburner, and following the instructions you posted on this forum, but received the same message.

Any suggestions?


i dont know how our setup differs from yours, but we were able to just install 3ds max and run backburner as is...we didnt make any changes to any files or anything. make sure when you submit the job that there are no checkboxes unchecked that should be checked (thats a lot of checks). like for last years animation we had to "include maps" because we used maps that were on the host computer