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How Net work Rendering Works 181
and jobs, always striving for the most efficient
usage of the rendering network. An idle rendering
Ser ver is automatically detected by the Manager
and is considered for job or frame assignment. If a
Server goes off-line for some reason, t h e Manager
reclaims the Server’s current frame and reassigns
the frame to the next available rendering Ser ver.
The B asic Process
Following is a step-by-step description of the
sequence of events when you use network
rendering:
1. The user submits a job to the network Manager.
2. On the submitting machine, the MAX file gets
zipped up. If the user turned on Include Maps,
allmapsandXRefsarealsozippedup.
3. Once the file is zipped up, the ZIP file
is copied to the Manager machine’s
Backburner\Network\Jobs\<jobname> folder.
In the folder is an X ML file describing the job
itself, specifying frame size, output filename,
frame range, render settings, etc.
4. Once the Manager receives the ZIP and XML
files, it looks to see which servers are sitting idle
and can render jobs. It assigns the job to four
servers at a time. (This is the Max Concurrent
Assignments setting on the Manager General
Properties dialog. See S
tarting Backburner
Manager ).
5. Each Server machine receives the ZIP and XML
files into the Backburner\Network\jobtemp
folder .
6. The MA X file gets unzipped, along with the
maps and XRefs if they were included.
7. 3ds Max is launched and loads the MAX file.
If the maps and XRefs were not included,
the software searches for them as they are
defined in the MAX file. For instance, if an
XRef is in d:\foo\xref.max,theServerwilllook
for xref.max in d:\foo\ on the local machine.
If there are additional map paths set in the
3dsmax.ini (page 1–18) file on the rendering
server, it will search in those paths as well. If it
does not find the maps and XRefs, the server
fails for that particular job.
This is w hy it is important to use UNC paths for
all maps and XRefs in your scene file, so that all
render servers can find them. However, if the
maps and XRefs were included, then 3ds Max
w i ll get the ones that were unzipped into the
\jobtemp folder .
8. When a f rame is finished rendering, 3ds Max
on the Server saves the frame to the lo c ation
specified via the Render Scene dialog before
you submitted it.
9. Once a Server successfully renders one f r ame,
theManagerassignsablockofframestothe
server to render; it mig ht assign 20 consecutive
frames. This minimizes the amount of
communication needed b etween the Server
and Manager.
10.The S erver cont inues rendering frames for the
job until the job is done.
11.TheServerthencloses3dsMax,andgoesidle.
If the queue contains additional jobs, the Server
picks up the next job and starts the process all
over again.
You can use this explanation to help determine
the basic requirements for your network
rendering setup, based on the type of usage.
If your frames render quickly, you’ll need a
fast file server machine to handle the constant
output from a number of different rendering
servers. The same holds true of your scene uses
a large quantity of map files that are stored in
a central location. If you typically render large
files, rendering will take longer, and most of the
bandwidth w ill be required at the start, when
the files are distributed to the rendering servers.