[GM5]

They are probably taking some well deserved time off after working a ton of hours to get v1 out.

-Greg

[JDHill]

Has anyone noticed a distinct absence of A-Team member’s lately...

I apologize for not knowing a whole bunch about network rendering, Maxer...but I've only got one machine. On the other hand, I think I had something over 30 posts just yesterday...mainly just trying to help people out with other technical issues.

...it's Saturday...cya.

[Maxer]

Another thing i noticed, just did a coop render,and the merged mxi was 2 mxi's from diff scenes merged together, so i guess it doesnt automatically delete them, or overwrite them? Anyone else have this problem? Having to delete all the coop.mxi, merge.mxi from each computer for each render, is a bit time consuming...

The only sure way I've found to get around this is to reboot each server after you finish a rendering. Even deleating the MXI's won't always fix the problem, there is something else going on there.

[Takumi Takahashi]

Sorry this is already a known fact, but In my case, the order is like this;

Let's say I have 2 machines named host1 and host2 and typing into consoles like ;


host 2:
mxcl -server

host1:
mxcl -server
mxcl -manager
mxcl -d (.... specify the manager ip as host1's ip via network option)


I guess the point is, maxwell servers must be up and running on each node at the time of maxwell manager is initially kicked in. Otherwise you will see bunch of connection refused messages on manager console.


-tak

A correction ... This does not always produce a successful start-up of the coop rendering, since I have to restart all of above procedures, then it does work, but cannot say what is causing the problem... maybe starting up manager first works. Sorry,

[joie]

What if the SL in some of the nodes are waaaaaaaay different?, I mean, three nodes reach SL9 and some more reach only SL6?, I got that and the merged result was noisier than one SL9 node rendering...

[Maxer]

Mihai has said that it doesen't matter what SL level each machine reaches, they will all contribute to reducing the total noise in the image.

[joie]

Not in my test I´m afraid...

The merged result was worse than the highest SL from ONE of the nodes, How can that be possible?

[b-kandor]

I've never seen that problem, don't know what could cause it? Sounds like a fluke....

[misterasset]

Anybody have any clue as to how to start all the machines at my office from just my computer without having to run to them all. I tried the PSTools idea thing and it just didn't work for me. Perhaps a short tutorial/explanation from somebody who's had success? Thanks.

[b-kandor]

Do you mean turn them on or start mxcl -server on them? If you just want to control the boxes remotely on a lan use VNC - it's free and works very well.

[misterasset]

Okay, I'm having problems with this, here's what's going on.

I'm on our network here at the office. Two computers, both running WindowsXP Pro being served by a server running Windows 2003.

I'm logged onto one computer as myself and my coworker is logged onto theirs as themselves.

From their computer I run "mxcl -server -p:low"

Then from mine I run "mxcl -manager" followed by "mxcl -server -p:low" followed by "mxcl -d".

I then go to the "Network" tab and click "Connect." After I do that I see both my computer and my coworker's listed in the Render Farm.

I load up an MXS file that is on a company drive "L:" that everyone has access to. I tell it to write the MXI file back to the exact same directory.

I go back to the "Network" tab and click add job, it brings up the currently loaded MXS file, I tell it to be "cooperative" and click "OK."

Job ID 0 says "Rendering" but when you click the plus next to it to see what's going on it just sits there saying "Receiving Scene" for both computers.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

[Takumi Takahashi]

Just curious, does mapping remote host to a drive letter such as "L:" work for specifying directory ?

I always use ¥¥machineName¥ UNC path convention and seemed to work okay, but if I use drive letters, then I will have a problem, especially in a case like finding textures, etc. Maybe the same thing goes for cooperative render command line to specify the mxi writing location !?

CORRECTION : Yes the mapped drive letter works. Sorry about my confusion.

[misterasset]

I've never had a problem with using drive letters, they work very well for me.

Since I posted that I've played around some more and it's weird. If I run server on the other computer and manager on mine, it works. If I run server and manager on just mine it works. It doesn't work when I run server on both. Anybody encounter that problem? I'm so close.

[misterasset]

Okay, so I discovered that the "receiving scene" problem came from the fact that myself and my coworker don't have write access to the "C:\" drives of our computers. It's a security feature they put in place to keep us from putting programs and so forth on the computers. The only place we can write to is our the Network drives.

If I get my boss to log in as an Administrator who can write to both local and network drives the network rendering works just fine, the only hitch is he won't let me leave an Administrator logged in overnight.

Is there any way to make maxwell write the "cooperative.mxi" to a place other than the "C:\" drive?

[chek]

do you mean that I have to share "C:\" drive on my manager computer with writing access to be able to receive the scene and the completely merged .mxi and avoid the long and tedious process of making it manually