9

Basic Procedures for Network Rendering 175
See also
Basic Procedures for Network Rendering (page
3–175)
Network Job Assignment Dialog (page 3–190)
Batch Rendering (page 3–201)
Troubleshooting Guide (page 3–183)
B a sic Pr ocedur es for N etwork
Rendering
This topic contains basic procedures to follow
when network rendering with 3ds Max. The
following conditions are assumed:
•3dsMaxhasbeeninstalledonallmachinesto
use as rendering servers. Note: You needn’t
license the software on machines to be used
only as rendering servers.
• All network communications and protocols are
installed and operating correctly.
• ThecomputersrunWindowsXPPro,Windows
2000, or NT 4.0. Limitations of other operating
systems could cause network rendering to be
unreliable.
• All of the computers have names that start
with letters. Machine names that start with a
number will fail.
• You ha ven’t previous attempted network
rendering. If you have already attempted
network rendering and want to return to the
original state, delete everything in the \Program
Files\Autodesk\Backburner\Network folder
except nrres.dat.
• Manager and Server have not been installed as
services.
Summar y of Procedures
• Procedure 1 - Use this procedure for
configuring a single system to render jobs
to itself; in other words, to perform batch
rendering t hat is managed by Backburner.
• Procedure 2 - Use this procedure for
configuring a Backburner Manager system
to render to one or more Backburner Server
systems. The Manager system will not be
involved in the rendering tasks.
• Procedure 3 - Use this procedure for
configuring the Backburner Manager and
Backburner Server systems to render tasks
together.
Special Consideration for Procedures 2 and 3
To use a render farm, you must output a frame
sequence in a still-image fi le format; for example, a
series of BMP files. You cannot render animated
file formats such as AVI or MOV to multiple
systems. You must render animated files to a
single system. When rendering to an animated
file format, the Use All Servers check box in the
Network Job Assignment dialog is unavailable.
B as ic Pr ocedure 1: S ingl e-Sys tem
Network R ender ing
This procedure describes usage of network
renderingonasinglecomputer. Themain
advantage to this method over standard rendering
is that you can submit multiple rendering jobs
for the computer to render. In effect, this lets you
perform batch rendering.
1. Go to Start menu > Programs >
Autodesk > Backburner and choose the
Manager menu item.
This starts Manager and creates the
backburner.xml file in t he Backburner\Network
folder.
When you run Manager for the first time,
you will see the Backbur ner Manager General
Properties dialog, shown below.