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Is purchasing an additional computer and a render node license, then using the network render stable\easy, or are there a lot of problems with the whole network rendering.

You will get differing opinions, I'm sure, but I have had great success using 5 computers in our office.

Bubbaloo, thanks for the response, do u use cooperative render or do u render individual images on each node?


thanks
dan

I always use cooperative render.
All of my render nodes have the same OS, Vista.
I think that's important.

Have you had any problems merging images?

No, the only problem I've had is when a node crashes, I have to go to each local HD and gather the mxi's and merge them manually. Other than that it works smooth. You just have to make sure all of the computers have access to the textures. Put your scene and textures on the network first.

Thanks for the advice

i want to test also the network stuff cause we got 15 nodes for Vray and i want to set them up for maxwell rendering. Any advise where i should start? I'm heading in the manual on nwt rendering for now!!

Sure i'll will test on one node before.

Start by installing Maxwell on the nodes.

I agree with Bubbaloo, the only problem is that a node might crash now and then. It's really easy to setup and use. Just make sure you have the same Maxwell version on all nodes and workstations.

Hi all, here we are using Deadline for Vray and MR, and we are testing Deadline for Maxwell, i let you know asap it s done.

Tanguy

Hi there,

Thanks for the help.

1st Step:
i just run the maxwell server app. and on the Manager system, i'll run both maxwell manager and maxwell server to use it also as a node (i'm just testing the simplest config for now)

2nd Step.
Identiy the nodes available from the render farm window and connect them.

3rd Step:
Add job...find an mxs from an exported sequence and define the frames to be rendered........ or add a single MXS for single frame to be rendered.......and thats it!!!

Note:
Firewalls must be open.

Am i missing something or maxwell is just wonderfull?

Thats correct.
Something that I've experienced is that if I use the same machine as File-server for MXM files and MXS file + manager + server I sometimes get some instability problems...

Also if you are using winXP64 or winXp32 as fileserver, you will have a problem when you are passing 10 rendernodes... You will need a server OS on the fileserver.

Right now we have a Novell server only running as a fileserver (MXM, MXS files, MXI output) one machine is running only manager, and the rest are running as servers. All of the machines has winXp64 and 4 GB of ram, except the fileserver.

works like a charm

is it possible to test a network setup using the demo version on the node?

network rendering is very basic and needs alot of work IMO.
The main issue for me is that you are not getting 100% from your hardware due to the way the coop mode is designed (merging different mxis together to improve SL) so that each node anly improves quality by a percentage rather then rendering regions for example. You will also find that sometimes a node may crash during rendering or (more commonly) during MXi compilation stage at the end of the render. You can still however recover the mxi files manually from each node if this happens. I've already posted a number of suggestions for improving this side of MAXwell, but will have to wait and see what happens. Network rendering is of course the most essential aspect of this software due to it being so incredibly slow to render, so lets hope NL take notice!

Would recommend a separate Fileserver btw.