[insomnia3d]

But here is the thing... I'm pointing the output MXI to a single file on a network location. When rendering all nodes are under a line that states the target time and SL, which intituti would tell me that at the end the output MXI's will be added. Lastly, when stopped the nodes display "Merging MXI's"
which would mean that it is merging then, however where is the merge....?

[insomnia3d]

IKEA... i mean EUREKA...
Tricki bastard, the coperative mxi file will be saved on the C drive of the Manager machine as cooperative.mxi by default, and not the network location like we al thought. i works wonderfully and very fast too...

We all own a thans to Prezise, he is the one that unlocked the awnser on another non related post

[insomnia3d]

Cooperative Rendering, only afte 1 hour and a half.

[Ernesto]

I find this process too tricky, and In my opinion it is not well explained in the manual. The manual assumes that the user is a software specialist.
Unfortunately I am not...

Ernesto

[casey]

I find this process too tricky, and In my opinion it is not well explained in the manual. The manual assumes that the user is a software specialist.
Unfortunately I am not...

Don't feel bad, those of us who are specialists also can't get it working properly

I'm assuming it's just an unpolished feature, since they were so under-the-gun to get Maxwell out after missing their previous deadlines. I expect it will get much easier with point updates.

- Casey

[insomnia3d]

Ok,
I agree that may be NL should have made a step by step tutorial of the process with either a video or with screenshots. But from that to totally putting down their efforts its a bit too much.
We do not seem to remember, unless you are new to this, that with backburner, brazil, MR, or Vray it is a much more painfull and strange process. I addition, i have never seen a cooperative rendering that actually helped the speed of the rendering time.
We all know that Maxwell might still need some refinements, but you tell me a 3d software that does not.

On your deffense NL i think you have given us a tool that will help us change the face of the industry. However you might what to consider some video tutorial to make us understand better some of the complexities of the software (i know Mike is working on one already)

Laterz

[casey]

I agree that may be NL should have made a step by step tutorial of the process with either a video or with screenshots. But from that to totally putting down their efforts its a bit too much.

Nobody's putting them down, we're just saying that it isn't working properly yet, which is true. As I specifically said, I expect they will have it working well shortly, because it's almost there. I suspect they were too focused on other parts of the project to have time to get this part totally smooth, so when they do have time to devote to it, it shouldn't take long to make it pretty seamless.

- Casey

[deadalvs]

how about texture paths...

1) do the textures have to be ONLY on the manager machines, where the .mxs is feeded

2) do they have to be put manually on each slave? (if yes, in which dir ?)

3) are all textures included in the .mxs file?

4) are the textures for .mxm files included in the .mxm file and sent like this or only the path locating to the manager dir?

5) is is best to use a dir which can be accessed from everywhere over the network like:
IP/renderdir/textures/texture.pic

* * *

6) is there NO way to help macs render in a pc farm too at the moment? referring to page 71 in the manual...

* * *

deadalvs

[insomnia3d]

Well, sorry if i misunderstood...
But for some of us cooperative rendering is working perfectly. For mypart i own PeterK for writing that great and comprehensive tutorial..If followed step by step, there is no missing...

And sorry dude if i came up a bit strong there,... not my intention

[casey]

But for some of us cooperative rendering is working perfectly. For mypart i own PeterK for writing that great and comprehensive tutorial..If followed step by step, there is no missing...

Wait - do you mean including automatic merging, or are you merging manually? I only could get as far as merging manually, automatic merging is what we were talking about in this thread. If you've got automatic merging working properly, I have some questions for you

- Casey

[Peter_K]

Hey Casey, I´ve done ALOT of testing today, with various configurations.

This is what my conclusion is:

Manual merging (doing the painstaking thing to manually copy each cooperative.mxi file from each node to one place, and then in mxcl viewer choose cooperative mxi) always looks better than the .mxi file it creates automatically once rendering is done.



This is not the best comparision image.

This is the same image though, at 100% with a automerged image and manually merged image with as difference layer. I´ve adjusted the levels so you can see the difference better.. What you see is basically the noise difference between the two..



Btw.. Since the nodes seems to get stuck on the first .mxs scene file.. I had to create a .bat file removing the cooperative.mxs file so they would accept new incoming .mxs scene files.. So if you have the problem that you cooperative renders doesn't look any different from a single render, this might be the problem.

This is what I do..

1. I render a scene, once its done, I shut down the mxcl on the rendernodes.

2. I run a .bat file containing this:

del "C:\Program Files\Next Limit\Maxwell\cooperative*.*"
del "C:\Program Files\Next Limit\Maxwell\merge*.*"

3. I start mxcl -server again

4. I'll start a new network render.

This atleast works for me as a workaround for the moment..

/Regards Peter K

[b-kandor]

Also, that bat file can be expanded to wipe temp mxs and mxi files on all render nodes if you just share the maxwell folder on each node. You can then access each folder by \\machine_name.

Kandor

[sunmade]

hello all.

How do I map drives?

And what do I have to do to ensure all servers acces to the same drive (if I have understood that correctly) ?

I can't grasp that bit.

I'm on a MAC btw.

thanks
chris

[Eric Lagman]

After reading through this thread it seems pretty complicated. Is it safe to say that unless I really need coop rendering for a paying job to maybe wait until NL gets it working properly. It is not working properly right?

[b-kandor]

Hi Eric,

It is working for me - but I do clear out any temporary mxs or mxi files on each render node prior to starting a new job. And I use direct paths (ie. \\machine_name/folder/....")

I have 3 computers here. 2 are render nodes and on my workstation I run manager, then viewer (where I need to edit my local ip from 127.0.0.1 to it's dhcp number), then server. So you end up with 3 command prompt windows.

I always set my *.mxi path again using the machine path to a shared folder. And it does autocombine fine. Although I just saw an example which shows that manual combining is 'better' visually than autocombining' Again, simple to make a batch file to do it.

Kandor