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I have a hybrid render farm consistion of a Mac G5 and a Dual core Windowz computer.

I have viewer, manager and server running on the mac and server running on the PC.

I have "Ready" status on both mac and PC in the renderfarm panel.

I load a xxx.mxs file that resides in a shared folder, accesible to the PC.

I start the render in cooperative mode from the "network" panel and both computers render and I can see each image in the viewer.

So up to here, all is OK.

When I stop the rendering, I get all the appropriate messages and then the green "success" status on both nodes.

The problem is that I don't get an xxx.mxi file anywhere on my host computer, and the PC server console says:

"Render finished succesfully"
"WARNING: - IMAGE "afp://NosemanG5.local/noseman/for PC G5/zz_maxwellResults/Glass_a0000.tga" not saved.

And finally I don't have a final tga file, or a mxi file...

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

After further investigation I have stumbled upon a (serious) bug... and a workaround solution.

In the "Add job" window, when I add the mxs for coop rendering, the paths "Output settings" and "MXI" seem to be correct. But for some reason maxwell ignores them. You have to click on the little folder on the right of each path navigate to the appropriate folder and press "SAVE" so that the path gets "validated".

I consider this a serious issue...
Hope this helps.

for some reason during a cooperative render, the remote server (PC) cannot find the bitmaps. The local server (localhost) works properly...

I even put them in the same shared directory with the xxx.mxs file but the path doesn't seem to translate properly on the remote server.

HEEEEEEEEELP
I WANT TO RENDER ON 2 COMPUTERS...

noseman wrote:for some reason during a cooperative render, the remote server (PC) cannot find the bitmaps. The local server (localhost) works properly...

I even put them in the same shared directory with the xxx.mxs file but the path doesn't seem to translate properly on the remote server.

HEEEEEEEEELP
I WANT TO RENDER ON 2 COMPUTERS...

hi noseman,

did you already try my suggestions here?

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... hp?t=24491

markus

I'm afraid it has nothing to do with your post.
My renderFarm is 1 mac and 1 PC
the problem is that the bitmap path in the Mac Server comes accros as:
afp://NosemanG5.local/noseman/for PC G5/zz_maxwellResults/tex
and it renders fine
and on the PC as
users/noseman/for PC G5/zz_maxwellResults/tex
and it returns an error

for some reason the PC server doesn't get the full path.
The connection is ok, because without bitmaps I can render OK.

I don't want to go through studio, I just want to export my .mxs files from C4D and render them on the network through mxcl...

One question:

Has anyone from the beta testers managed to render on a hybrid cooperative network (mac and PC) succesfully? If yes, please give me a solution. If no... then, no comment

I will attempt to use a shared folder on my PC.
That is VERY risky because PC suck when it comes to security. Now my network is volnerable.
NL should fix this problem very soon. I want to use my mac as the main file holder...

If I am missing something, please help.

ha ha... this is ridiculus..

now that I have setup my network, and my shared folder is on a pc, the minute I choose the default bitmap folder from the add mxs menu, mxcl crashes...

what else should I expect... ?

... so what I do is to copy paste the path...
the bitmap path goes accross the PC correctly, but the bitmap can't be read...

noseman, afaik, at NL they did test successfully with hybrid mac/ PCnetworking, but unfortunately, the mac developer is in holiday for some time now, so he cannot help you directly. i did only tests with PPC and intel macs and i'm not an expert for mixed networks anyway....

but maybe a few points: probably the problem is that you didn't use a network path, but a local path for the texture folder on your client mac when setting the texture folder within the c4d plugin? did you try to connect the PC with the corresponding volume/ folder on the mac before starting the rendering? does it work if you define the texture path as an smb path?

at this point, if you still can try to set the paths again in studio.

last but not least, it may also be a problem of how the c4d plugin writes the texture path into the MXS.

anyway, i will bring this to attention of the developers, ok?

in the meantime, i hope you have luck!

markus

not even when I set network paths in C4d for my textures...
this is what the PC server is looking for:
/Volumes/WORKGROUP;NOSEMAN/glass_all/materials/cigarette.jpg

this is what is SHOULD be looking for:
\\NOSEMAN\MAXWELLSHARED\glass_all\materials\cigarette.jpg

GET IT?
FIX IT!

and if that wasn't enough, when I open mxStudio and try to reapply the textures from a PC shared folder, Studio crashes...

Congratulations!

last but not least, it may also be a problem of how the c4d plugin writes the texture path into the MXS.

that's why I tried to reapply the textures from Studio (which is a STUPID workaround).

and since the remote PC server can read the mxs how can it not read the bitmap path?
even when they are in the same directory...
and even when the default bitmap folder is set to a shared directory...

Thanks for your replies mgroeteke. I'm going to insist for a bit more.
My main concern (it has always been that with NL), WHY can't we get quick answers on these issues.
They always reply really fast when someone says something nice...

Same old same old......

If I get anywhere I'll post here...

when I try to assign the material from a PC shared volume, studio crashes, and the console says:

mxstudio(1331,0xa000ed88) malloc: *** vm_allocate(size=4289552384) failed (error code=3)
mxstudio(1331,0xa000ed88) malloc: *** error: can't allocate region
mxstudio(1331,0xa000ed88) malloc: *** set a breakpoint in szone_error to debug
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::bad_alloc'
what(): St9bad_alloc

hope this can help the dev team to do something

so... I tried the other way around.
I setup everything on the PC and tried to initiate the coop render from there.
The problem exists, but in the opposite direction.

The mac can't find the bitmaps now.

I even tried to map a Z: drive to a mac shared folder, and render from the PC, but the texture path that goes to the remote server is unreadable.

One again I would like to ask for a Explanation of how to setup a coop render on a hybrid network to render with textures (bitmaps)...

just to be sure: you are using the latest 1.5.1 version, right? do all server say this? anyway, it looks also like a plugin problem to me. could you please test if a scene from within studio which was not imported from c4d renders fine? maybe try to use a scene from the maxwell content folder and add a test texture. this way we can see it it is a plug in issue or not.

as far as i can read, you did the right thing for setting up the coop rendering so far, so it's probably some other trouble with this particular setup.

markus

1.5.1 on all servers


I opened the scene from studio (on the mac) and I did the following tests:

1. reassign the bitmaps from studio...
result:
the same texture problem with the remote server

2. tried to open the mxs file from a shared pc folder
result:
studio crashes while opening the scene

3. opening the mxs and trying to assign materials from a remote folder (on the PC)
result:
studio crashes when choosing the remote folder

4. Tried to render from the PC having the mac as a remote server
result:
mac (remote) can't see bitmaps

I don't know if I covered all possibilities, but something tells me this:
If the mxs can be read, but the bitmap can't, that means that the bitmap's path doesn't translate properly.
The easiest thing would be to have an option to read ALL bitmaps from the same folder as the mxs. During mxs creation (from the plugin or studio) all bitmaps could be copied to that folder and then the remote server can easily use the same network path to locate them.

I even opened the mxs from studio, did "pack and go" into a shared Mac folder, connected to that folder from the PC, again the bitmap path is "users/noseman...etc...etc" instead of "afp://Nosemang5/...etc...etc"

it doesn't seem to work.
That's why I have asked for a setup from anybody that has done it...

Thanks!