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Hello,

today I setup my renderfarm for Maxwell and ask me, could it be possible, that a network renderings can be automatic started from within Rhino without to open the mxs file in the maxwell display and ... ?

Also I wonder me too, that I must copy all needed files like IOR and textures to the shared drive. Could this be automatic done per plugin option?

It could be nice, if Maxwell plugin could get an option for network rendering and shared path. Or did I overseen it?

Best-
Micha

Hi Micha,

I have not really considered this much yet, since there have been many more fundamental features to implement, like the new camera tools, mblur functionality, instances (next update), etc.. These types of features take priority, since it is first necessary to bring the plugin to a point that it exposes all of the standard rendering features supported by the MXS format. In the 2nd update from now, I will bring a new way to work with Materials to the plugin - rather than always embedding new copies of Materials in every 3DM, Materials will be stored in a common location and referenced from there. This Material database may be configured to be located anywhere you have file-writing permissions - on the local machine, or on a shared drive somewhere in the network. If you are curious about this tool, see this page in the SolidWorks plugin help: http://www.maxwellrender.com/manual/sol ... anager.htm .

About supporting the transport of referenced texture/ior files and such, the plugin has had the 'Gather All Files' function for quite some time, but this feature is concerned with transporting 3DM files to other places, not MXS. I'll look into writing an 'Export MXS with Supporting Files' command which would copy all files to the target path, and modify all the paths in the resulting MXS - this should accomplish what you're talking about.

JD

JDHill wrote:...
About supporting the transport of referenced texture/ior files and such, the plugin has had the 'Gather All Files' function for quite some time, but this feature is concerned with transporting 3DM files to other places, not MXS. I'll look into writing an 'Export MXS with Supporting Files' command which would copy all files to the target path, and modify all the paths in the resulting MXS - this should accomplish what you're talking about.

This could be a nice first solution, thanks.

I thought about that , too....
as when the nodes are free, I want to use them for Material previews from within rhino.
It works ok for me, as I happen to use a shared folder for all materials/textures, so the only delay is cklicking "Add" in mxcl and change the ending number one up, if autonaming is enabled in the rhino plugIn.
mxcl remebers the last folder so adding new jobs should be a fast thing...

I just mention that as, for proper network support, we would need to also select the group/node we want to render to from within Rhino , and I don`t know if it is worth the coding effort..... but certainly cool to have if possible.

- a little floating window showing all available machines, select some, hit render......enjoy highspeed

Micha wrote:

JDHill wrote:...
About supporting the transport of referenced texture/ior files and such, the plugin has had the 'Gather All Files' function for quite some time, but this feature is concerned with transporting 3DM files to other places, not MXS. I'll look into writing an 'Export MXS with Supporting Files' command which would copy all files to the target path, and modify all the paths in the resulting MXS - this should accomplish what you're talking about.

This could be a nice first solution, thanks.

yep... sounds very good to me.