CGarchitect.com - View Single Post

CarlAhearne · February 20th, 2008

OK, I've managed to get this to work on about 6 machines here in our office, so I'll run through the way I got it to work...

1. I have MAX 2008 installed and authorised on 1 machine and I use that machine as the manager. This is the machine from which I will start any render jobs. On this machine, turn on Backburner server, monitor and manager. Make a note of the manager IP address. In the server, set the Server name or IP address to the IP address of that computer. The manager will be the same in this case, so enter that too. Set the server port to 3233 and the manager port to 3234. Open up the manager, and set the Manager port to 3234 and server port to 3233. Open up the Monitor, and hit the connect icon. Enter the Manager IP when prompted.

2. Install MAX 2008 on other machines, and do not authorise. Open up the Backburner server on each machine, and enter the IP address as with the manager machine. You shouldn't need to anything else with these machines now...

3. Go back to the manager machine, and go to the Monitor. Hit refresh, and you should see your other machines in the Show All list at the bottom. The status will likely say Idle.

In theory, you should now be able to go to MAX and hit the netwrok render, and submit the job to the queue. Once you've started the job, it will appear in the Monitor. Click on it, and you may notice the icons for the servers change.. The icon will show which servers are assigned to the job. The thing that I have found to work is to select each server, hit the Remover server icon (All within the Monitor) and then hit the Assign Server to make sure it is assigned. Do this for each of the server nodes, and you should have lots of servers rendering for you.

Things to remember...

1. Get the latest Backburner, and it will work better if all of the servers have the same version.
2. Make sure that if you need any plugins, they are all installed on all of the machines.
3. Remember to check to see if the servers are assigned to the current job in the Monitor.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, and I hope it's of some use... Let me know how you get on... Maybe I should put a guide together and get a few people to check it for me, there really does need to be more documentation on this..

Carl

February 20th, 2008	#3 (permalink)
CarlAhearne Member Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Milton Keynes Posts: 40 Name: Carl Ahearne	Re: Distributed rendering issue, Max 2008 OK, I've managed to get this to work on about 6 machines here in our office, so I'll run through the way I got it to work... 1. I have MAX 2008 installed and authorised on 1 machine and I use that machine as the manager. This is the machine from which I will start any render jobs. On this machine, turn on Backburner server, monitor and manager. Make a note of the manager IP address. In the server, set the Server name or IP address to the IP address of that computer. The manager will be the same in this case, so enter that too. Set the server port to 3233 and the manager port to 3234. Open up the manager, and set the Manager port to 3234 and server port to 3233. Open up the Monitor, and hit the connect icon. Enter the Manager IP when prompted. 2. Install MAX 2008 on other machines, and do not authorise. Open up the Backburner server on each machine, and enter the IP address as with the manager machine. You shouldn't need to anything else with these machines now... 3. Go back to the manager machine, and go to the Monitor. Hit refresh, and you should see your other machines in the Show All list at the bottom. The status will likely say Idle. In theory, you should now be able to go to MAX and hit the netwrok render, and submit the job to the queue. Once you've started the job, it will appear in the Monitor. Click on it, and you may notice the icons for the servers change.. The icon will show which servers are assigned to the job. The thing that I have found to work is to select each server, hit the Remover server icon (All within the Monitor) and then hit the Assign Server to make sure it is assigned. Do this for each of the server nodes, and you should have lots of servers rendering for you. Things to remember... 1. Get the latest Backburner, and it will work better if all of the servers have the same version. 2. Make sure that if you need any plugins, they are all installed on all of the machines. 3. Remember to check to see if the servers are assigned to the current job in the Monitor. Anyway, sorry for the long post, and I hope it's of some use... Let me know how you get on... Maybe I should put a guide together and get a few people to check it for me, there really does need to be more documentation on this.. Carl