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Need help - render farm Maya 6/7


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Need help - render farm Maya 6/7
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kungfuelmosan
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-09-19, 04:59

Im setting up a network at school (15yrs, yr 10) and i want to also set up a render farm if possible on an XServe system - id ont know anything about render farms but a fair knowledge of mac and maya - please help

could some1 give me some info on software and hardware i need or some tutorials on the net.

Thanks!
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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2005-09-21, 16:54

If you post this stuff in the Genious Bar, you'll get better results.

http://forums.applenova.com/forumdisplay.php?f=11

Welcome to AN!
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DMBand0026
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Chicago
 
2005-09-21, 19:17

We also have a Genius Bar here...which is right down the street from the Genious bar.
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2005-09-21, 19:19

If Maya is anything like C4D, there should be secondary Server and Client applications, with instructions on how to set up batches. I've never actually used Maya, though.

Moving to the Jaundice Bar...

The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.
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geneman
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Copenhagen
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2005-09-21, 20:36

Why not call Apple and ask? I'm sure they be happy to make you an offer. They might want to 'oversell', but at least it should give you an idea of what you're looking at.
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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2005-09-22, 14:22

Quote:
Originally Posted by DMBand0026
We also have a Genius Bar here...which is right down the street from the Genious bar.
Yeah, well . . . uh . . . I was eating potatoe chips at the time and . . . uh . . . bite me!
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kungfuelmosan
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-09-23, 05:05

this is all well and good but also what software do i use? to send my projects to render farm - and does all software support all programs like will all programs support maya and shake or do i have look specifically
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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2005-09-23, 05:26

Quote:
Originally Posted by DMBand0026
We also have a Genius Bar here...which is right down the street from the Genious bar.
One clearly has stronger drink, one has stronger advice.
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curiousuburb
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2005-09-23, 05:32

Traditionally, most render farms required additional licenses for the farm machines (often less pricey than the 'full version' licenses on the main constructor machines), but since Maya has a PLE version, I'm not sure how their code differentiates the latest versions.

Some tools like SoftImage also had additional premiums for the particle system or MentalRay licenses... not cheap, since if you're an animation house in need of a render farm, you ought to be able to afford it.

As for the expense, it's not just software... to get optimal use out of a render farm, you may need to address issues such as network latency and RAID storage of finished frames. While the individual machines can divide the main render task into parallel streams, unless they can each optimize textures and local cache intelligently, the overall performance benefits of distributed work may not seem much more than a speedier machine in serial.

Tiger now ships with a clustering client, but basic Rendezvous Bonjour as a network discovery protocol may help. I'd have to do some more research to be specifically helpful, so I'll defer to others until then.

Looks like there are a variety of proprietary and 3rd party tools and techniques.

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-09-23 at 05:44.
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kungfuelmosan
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-09-23, 06:57

iv got all the info i need for hardware and today i noticed a lot of references to Qmaster, as far as i know it only ships with shake but it can be used for maya to, is this tru and can you get it by itself
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Grammar Police
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Join Date: Aug 2005
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2005-09-23, 08:26

I'm not knocking your content, kungfuelmosan, but if you'd like to be taken seriously in forum discussions, please take a few moments to check your spelling and grammar. Some messages like your last one are difficult to read and understand. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum; you have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting.

If you're using Safari on a Mac, here's one quick tip. Go to your "Edit" menu, select "Spelling," then select, "Check Spelling as You Type."

- Grammar Police

It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
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kungfuelmosan
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-09-25, 03:12

sorry
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kungfuelmosan
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-11-11, 05:02

This is an old thread I started a while ago about network rendering. Try as I might I still haven't got anywhere.

In short, does anyone know of any reliable and easy to use GUI maya network render distributer.

REALLY REALLY NEED THIS!!!!!! - ive got lots of computers doing nothing and they could be.
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curiousuburb
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2005-11-11, 07:37

Quote:
Originally Posted by curiousuburb
Looks like there are a variety of proprietary and 3rd party tools and techniques.

So did you check out any of the 30 or so options there?
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JayReding
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Minneapolis, MN
 
2005-11-11, 12:55

Quote:
Originally Posted by kungfuelmosan
This is an old thread I started a while ago about network rendering. Try as I might I still haven't got anywhere.

In short, does anyone know of any reliable and easy to use GUI maya network render distributer.

REALLY REALLY NEED THIS!!!!!! - ive got lots of computers doing nothing and they could be.
Maya PLE doesn't support network rendering. You'd need to purchase individual licenses of mental ray for Maya for each node on the network, which is obscenely expensive. It is, however, the quickest way to do network rendering for Maya.

http://www.alias.com/eng/products-se...endering.shtml
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kungfuelmosan
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-11-13, 05:15

what 30 options? - i have maya 6 complete - so maya 6 standalone with the mental ray render options doesnt offer networking, even in a third party application. Is it possible to have one computer with maya and send a render job to networked computers without maya on them? also is it possible to code some kind of applicaion through Xcode using the terminal command for network rendernig.
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HezMah19
Formerly "jmahe19"
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
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2005-11-13, 05:45

curiousuburb's link has exactly 30 programs for Mac & PC to distribute Maya jobs.
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kungfuelmosan
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-11-13, 17:20

ooooh - thanks heaps - are they for mac? - probably a stupid thing to ask seen as though I am going through them now
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kungfuelmosan
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-11-13, 17:26

As far as i can tell - the site is detailing the features of rendering in maya and no reference of third party network rendering distribution - I've looked at the alias parteners link for network rendering and what im looking for is a FREE 3rd party application unless its really easy to use and setup in which case I will purchase it - if there is anyone in the industry - what programs do you use for network distribution of render jobs?
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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2005-11-13, 18:15

Quote:
Originally Posted by kungfuelmosan
ooooh - thanks heaps - are they for mac? - probably a stupid thing to ask seen as though I am going through them now
Holy RTFM Batman...

Quote:
Originally Posted by kungfuelmosan
As far as i can tell - the site is detailing the features of rendering in maya and no reference of third party network rendering distribution - I've looked at the alias parteners link for network rendering and what im looking for is a FREE 3rd party application unless its really easy to use and setup in which case I will purchase it - if there is anyone in the industry - what programs do you use for network distribution of render jobs?
Did you miss the linked programs in the twice referenced link that were for Mac and were Free? Damn, dude...

From the description of MRender
Quote:
Very simple external Maya render tool for MacOSX. Formats a command line based on user set text fields then executes the render on button push. The command to be executed is shown at the bottom of the screen as it is updated.
One button for OS X... simple.

From the description of Farm Manager
Quote:
The Farm Manager is a client-server application used for partitioning & distributing compute jobs across a cluster of machines.
The main GUI application is the Farm Manager which is used for creating, queueing & partitioning jobs. The other half is the Farm Node which handles the launching and monitoring of a particular task on a machine.
The current version includes support for distributing Maya 6 & Mental Ray render jobs across a farm of machines. Version 2.x of the Farm Manager is built around a plug-in architecture which allows anyone to add support for virtually any application.
2.2 Changes:
- New output directory option for jobs
- Remote monitor crash fix.
- Bug fixes
Up to 3 nodes free... click their site to buy more nodes, cheap.

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kungfuelmosan
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Gold Coast
 
2005-11-14, 03:59

sorry, im a bit dosile lately!!!
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