A (most insane) Network Rendering Crashcourse

Hey, Hey! Mwuhuhuhahaha! Okay, sorry, I missed the simpsons tonight, so I needed that. Ah yes, network rendering. Confusion for those who havent spent many a countless night (sometimes a months worth!) trying to figger out how to make the darn thing work. If you think it’s bad with 4.0, try it with 1.2. Back in my day… err… wait. Back on track…

Anyways, the deal with network rendering is that yes, you must render individual frames. Basically it works like this.

One computer is set up as the manager, and sometimes a server as well. Both of these programs have icons labeled as such in the discreet/max4 folder. Even if you have only have 3 computers with which to render on, it is still worth it. One computer is used as the manager while the other two are used as servers. The servers do the actual rendering while the manager just sends each sever information, mainly which frame to render next. The more computers you have the better, as it will drastically cut down on render time. But if at all possible, try to get 4 computers - 2 to act as servers, 1 to act as a manager, and 1 to work on while other scenes render.

All of the frames are labeled sequentially, as in movie0001.tif, and so on, until you have all 900 frames (assuming it’s for the 30 second animation, at 30 frames/second.) All machines, the manager and servers, must have the same version of max with the same plugins, and access to all textures, as well as a folder where all of the images will be stored. Usually what I do is set up a shared folder on the managing computer, as well as a basic account that can use that folder. I put all of my textures there and make sure that they are linked to properly. A warning message usually pops up if the textures cannot be found, then all you have to do is select the folder where they are from a button on the error message.

Make sure that you set up the manager first by launching the program and setting any settings you need. You may need to restart the program after any setting modifications. Then once the manager is running, simply load up the server application on each machine to be used as a server and enter the IP address or PC name of the manager. These applications will needed to be restarted as well for the settings to take effect. Upon restarting they should register within a short time with the manager. Should they not, please have your network administrator check the network connections of PC’s that fail to register with the manager. Also make sure that the IP of the manager is correct.
There are also timeout settings for connecting with the manager, and other options which I cannot remember at the top of my head at the moment. My suggestion would be to read through the MAX manuals about network rendering for details with this as a basic guide until I get around (or IF I get around… lazy punk…B^) to writing a detailed tutorial.

Now on the managing computer (which by the way, the managing computer WILL need a hardware or software lock, depending on the version of MAX you have, the servers will not.) load up the scene that you want to render in MAX. When you click on render, and the render window comes up, make sure that NETWORK RENDERING is checked. Set your file output to the shared directory, and click on render. This should bring you to another window, the network rendering window, which will ask you to select the servers you want to render with. Select the servers you wish to use, then hit okay, or whatever button renders from this point (doh! faulty memory banks…). This should now launch your server’s copies of MAX and begin rendering the individual files. I usually render to TIFs because of thier high quality. But low compression means you will need from 1.5 to 2 gigs of space to store the images.

When the rendering is over with, you can use a magical tool called an IFL file. These things seriously rule, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to have thier points un-welded the hard way. If you go to the utility (or tools, the one with the hammer)panel in MAX, and click more, there should be a utility called IFL MANAGER. This will allow you to create IFLs, which are Image File Lists. MAX can use these in video post to create the full avi - So you can be faithful to discreet and never use an adobe product! Yay!

Okay, this is just a really simple run through of how to do this. It’s right off the top of my head, and I havent touched MAX in a while, but I’ve done it every year since version 1.2, so I know it’s quirks and ins n outs pretty well. I will do my best to write a more detailed tutorial, and I will also post the IFL/Video post one from FIRSTanimators here shortly. Which also reminds me that if you are interested in being a part of that community, email me or join it over at yahoo!Groups. [email protected]. Yay. Shameless plugging. There’s also a great resource-sharing webpage set up by a member of that group, which will debut soon (I hope) as we have more material to paste up on the site. If you have a tutorial you would like to share, please email me, and I will contact him.

This tutorial (or more accurately crashcourse) is written assuming that windows NT or 2000 is being used, as I know that MAX has trouble network rendering in 98 or below. But the best advice I have to give is to plan and experiment EARLY! Do not leave finding any problems out until 3 days before the animation is due! Believe me, I’ve been there. The stories I could tell.

Okey dokey, that’s it for my weekly (kinda) 3:25 AM rant about animation or other stuff. Any other questions about MAX I’ll do my best to tackle them like a weeble wobble. My only problem is getting those darn things to fall down…

-Robby O —> [email protected]
FIRSTanimators Moderator
[email protected]

Do you know any website or interactive tutorials where they teach you 3D Studio Max from scrath?
Thanx

http://www.webreference.com/3d/ is good and so is http://www.3dcafe.com . Webreference has 118 3dsmax tutorials (most of which are 3dsmax 4) and 3d cafe is good for just about everything (tutorials, skins, models, etc.)