[jjs]

No message - just getting an email to keep me informed of developments

TTFN

Jonathan

[Maxer]

Ok I've basically figured this out now the part that I'm a little fuzzy on. After my rendering is finished and I look at all the render nodes and there is a file in there called cooperative.mxi which I take is the single MXI file created by that node. From what I understand it sounds like Maxwell is trying to combine all of these files together to create a single MXI file but isn’t not working for some reason. I have to manually combine these files together and that is where I'm stumped because how do I combine 5 files named the same thing over the network when Maxwell only lets me choose one at a time?

[insomnia3d]

Maxer,
In my case it was automatically created on the NL Maxwell directory. It was there while i was trying to merge them manually.

[b-kandor]

Maxer, the coop mxi open command lets you open multiple files at once, but yes it's easier if they are moved into a common folder.

In my case, in the render options I set the mxi path using the form:

\\machine_name\shared_drive\folder\mymxi.mxi and this does work. If your setting that path to a lettered drive then each node would have to have identical mapped network drives.

Kandor

[Maxer]

It's pretty obvious that there are some problems with cooperative rendering, basically if you want the benefits of this process you have to go and collect all the MXI files, re-name them and merge them together. Try doing this on 100+ machines with 100+ MXI files and it becomes a ridiculous waste of time. I'm trying to understand why this hasn't been fixed, Mike you say it's working perfectly for you so how have you worked your way around these problems?

This failed merging process is the biggest problem that needs to be fixed in the first round of upgrades. Also wouldn’t it have just been much easier to say that cooperative rendering doesn’t fully work and tell us what the problems are instead of letting us fumble around all night learning what you already know....NL I'm talking to you.

[paxreid]

Maxer, the coop mxi open command lets you open multiple files at once, but yes it's easier if they are moved into a common folder.

In my case, in the render options I set the mxi path using the form:

\\machine_name\shared_drive\folder\mymxi.mxi and this does work. If your setting that path to a lettered drive then each node would have to have identical mapped network drives.

Kandor

Maxer..

B-Kandors suggestion worked for me as well (except I just watched cooperative automatically merge the MXI's saved in the folder)...if you have a network drive with a common directory...say MXI and point to that in your command line reference. The cooperative rendering merges all the mxi's and saves the final to that directory..no manual merging needed.

...I must add...this frickin coop is awesome thanks NL!!! saves much time if you have the available computing resources.

[Maxer]

That's exactley what's happening on my system, it's writing an un-merged MXI file to the network folder. If I manually merge all the MXI's on the other nodes I get an images that is better than the one in the network folder.

[Maxer]

That's probably because they either don't know the answer, or the answer is we’re going to have to wait till the next release which could be months from now before the problem can be fixed.

[paxreid]

I don't think I have the magic touch or anything..but it is working just fine here....

I have done a number of screen shots that may...or may not help..
granted..the test wasn't on the most challenging of images..it does work!

1..
Final Image showing both tests...one on left was using multiple computer. Hard to see on the screen...but in photoshop if you zoom in - it is clear that the multiple computer is much more clear.


2...here is a setup that worked for me

[zapalamon]

I have the same problem, i tried to make the mxi file to output to the same folder and it seems like it's working but the quality looks the same and nothing.

I just spent 2 hours trying this and even merged them manually and they do not create a better quality merge. This sucks.

It seems that all my machines output the cooperative.mxi file to default dir in each local machine even after i specified to ouput to network drive. Weird.

Can someone tell me how to force the server machines to create the same cooperative file to network drive.

I wish someone from NL would comment on this problem.

Thanks

[paxreid]

seriously...It works like advertised. The following is a dumb glass sphere scene...check it out.

you will see two images...

1....comparison between the standalone image created by one machine (10.10.3.111) on my network rendering....and the cooperative solution (10.10.3.111, 10.10.4.114, and 10.10.3.90). I did no manual MXI merging, I just opened the final MXI and saved the image out of it.





2....the screen shot showing the two tests (id2 is the single computer test and id3 is the multi-computer test.)..




The software works as promised..the problems lie on our systems and setup...If I can be of any help, let me know. I don't know what else to say. Good luck.

Paxton

[KRZ]

coop works likes most other render.
i have 3 shortcuts on my work-computer
1. mxcl -manager
2. mxcl -server
3. mxcl -d

on my other computers i have
1. mxcl -server

i start first the manger then all the servers and at last i take a look with mxcl -d.
i open a mxs file throught the local path and select a network-location for the mxi and jpg output. i start a job with those values. the files get distributed and they start to render. perfect!

but now i get the problem that the servers want to read the jpg-output file and they cant "read" it. this error message is followed by the message that the output-.jpg cant be saved too.

i checked the network-paths with both \\name\... and \\192.168.0.x\... both didnt work. i also checked the rights on file-level and i wonder what users those maxwell-servers are to give them the proper rights. the strange thing is that my workstation (the coputer where the file shout be saved) cant read and save too.

UPDATE:
i allways changed security for "everyone" on file-level and totaly forget to set that permission on the "share". now it works!

[Maxer]

My suspicions are that maxwell network rendering setup needs full permissions as well as mapped drives. For some people it seems to work strait out of the box, for others like me it seems that some of the data isn't being written to the network folder for some reason.

[b-kandor]

I'm doing fine just using the \\machine_name\ path instead of mapped drives.

But I have had rendernodes use old coop.mxi files located on their C: drives. That seems like it would be easy to correct. First of all, it's weird that the coop.mxi files are written into the root of the maxwell install directory, right beside all of the exe and dll files. Instead maybe a temp folder in the maxwell directory that gets emptied before the start of every job.

Kandor

[Maxer]

Has anyone noticed a distinct absence of A-Team member’s lately, I would have thought they would be all over the forum answering these technical questions. If ever we need them it's now, so what's going on?