Telecommuting?

Maxer · May 28th, 2008

I don't know how many of you work in an office and how far you have to drive to get there but my daily commute is about 50 miles round trip. With the cost of gas climbing every day I'm starting to look at alternatives, besides buying a new car that gets better gas mileage I've been thinking about telecommuting.
The benefits are obvious, the more days I can work at home the less I pay in gas and the hour and 30 minutes I spend in traffic every day can be spent at home with the family. There are several things to consider the most important is can I effectively work from home using a DSL connection to remote login to my work computer? I do this all the time to check on jobs that are in backburner, or to submit jobs for rendering and even to do a little work on images that I didn't have time to get to at work. The problem is the lag time in display refresh I get using this type of connection; it would be much slower than actually sitting at the computer. I don’t know if there is a better software application than remote desktop that would give better display and refresh performance, if there is it’s worth taking a look at. If not then I’d be faced with carrying my 40LB computer to and from work which wouldn’t really work because all of my distributed rendering nodes would still be here as well as all the material and model libraries.
I hope that some of you are doing this already and can give me some tips or ideas on the best way to make this work.

SandmanNinja · May 28th, 2008

I don't think updating the screen via remote access is the way to go.

However, if you keep a window open to it, a drive mapped remotely to it or to the same drive mappings as your work computer, then when you render, either submit it via the work computer to the render node or try to get the render network to work via the remote drive mappings.

Another way to do it would be a WAN - Wide Area Network - where work would set up a special server, you guys connect thru it, and it's just like you're at the office.

Chad Warner · May 28th, 2008

Really I think the main drawback you'll face is the DSL connection. I've got a terribly slow computer at home, but a cable internet connection, so connecting to the office isn't an issue if I need to check the status of jobs or whatever. I wouldn't try to do it over DSL though.

If it helps, the App I use (which someone here recommended) is from www.logmein.com they have a free program that is VERY cool, and allows you to login to your computer from any other computer in the world.

BrianKitts · May 28th, 2008

Personally I would invest in a decent laptop and get your licenses portable. When I'm on the road I work on my macbook attached to a 500gb external HD and a USB hub with my dongle's for vray and archicad. Add autodesk's PLU for moving around the max license between your work computer and laptop and you're ready to go.

I do work at home now and then with that setup, but I normally don't do any major work. Most of the time it's trouble shooting other peoples scenes, modeling, and scene setup or if it's any rendering, I'm mostly doing render regions to check materials after doing small tests with the rendering settings cranked back. A dualcore can get it done. I have a dualcore desktop at home that I'll sometimes DR through for 4 cores.

If I need to start a full-res render I upload the scene back to the office through the VPN, use window's remote desktop to access my computer and fire it off on the renderfarm back at the office. Cisco VPN is solid, I'm sure there's other available routes for VPN.

You could probably form that into a workable scenario for working from home. One thing I would definitely check into is getting a GoToMeeting account. I do half my work for other offices and that program is clutch for reviewing work and discussing renders/markups remotely. Emailing files and trying to discuss things on the phone is okay, but it's alot easier when you can pass back and forth control of a shared screen and point directly at things so you are sure what each other is talking about.

Maxer · May 29th, 2008

It sounds like a WAN and a GoToMeeting account are my best choices to make this work. Thanks for the advice!

Jeff Mottle · May 29th, 2008

As someone who has telecommuted for the past 5 years, both as a production artist and as someone in management, I can tell you without question no remote desktop, LogMeIn or GoToMeeting is going to give you enough capability to work effectively. Specifically working within the Max interface to do anything other than perhaps press render or set up a job etc. Especially given you will need to connect via a VPN. (see below)

You'll either need another workstation for home or a laptop (desktop replacement). You'd work on files locally and render test renders locally, but production renders would be sent back to your farm in the office.

As far as file access. I'm not sure what your company security policies are, but you would not want to set up a WAN using a public internet lines without implementing a VPN site to site connection to ensure the security of both of your local networks and files. The problem however is that VPNs must encrypt/decrypt the data on each end, so it slows down transfer speed CONSIDERABLY. Trust me, from experience you will go nuts trying to do this as it's easily 10-20 times slower than accssing a local network.

My suggestion would be to have a local mirror of all of your files from work and then sync the two (home and office) at night. This of course does not help you when you just created 5GB of files and now need to push it all to the farm at 2am. You'll have to wait for all of the files to transfer or go to the office and upload them manually. Something I never had the luxury of doing as the office was 1000's of miles away or overseas.

Maxer · May 29th, 2008

Oh

that's what I was afraid of. The problem is that I use distributed rendering all the time just to do tests; I'd either have to take a rack server's worth of hardware home with me or get a couple of those 16 core machines from Boxx. It's not looking good for telecommuting; I might have to get an electric car it would probably cost less than the two Boxx machines

Jeff Mottle · May 29th, 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maxer

Oh

that's what I was afraid of. The problem is that I use distributed rendering all the time just to do tests; I'd either have to take a rack server's worth of hardware home with me or get a couple of those 16 core machines from Boxx. It's not looking good for telecommuting; I might have to get an electric car it would probably cost less than the two Boxx machines

You might want to run a test, I'm not sure how much traffic actually passes back and forth from the GUI box and the distributed machines. It might be ok. Copying large files back and forth is problematic though and you would not want to open a file from the work network and work on it, as it's very slow, especially if there are auto-saves.

Jeff Mottle · May 29th, 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maxer

It's not looking good for telecommuting; I might have to get an electric car it would probably cost less than the two Boxx machines

I do have to laugh about the price of gas in the US and how everyone is freaking out. In Canada, we've been paying more than you are paying now for a few years. As my Murrano only takes premium it costs $130 to fill it from bone dry these days. I'm paying over $5 a gallon to fill my car and in Europe they pay a lot more than that in places. All what you get used to I guess. Curiously where I live in Canada, we supply 20% of the US crude oil...how does that work...

Maxer · May 29th, 2008

The problem is you guy's have been paying higher prices for a long time, we've seen a 400% increase within the last year or two. Places like Houston are so spread out that it's imposable to get anywhere unless you drive 10 or 20 miles. Public transportation is a joke unless you want to spend hours on the bus to get somewhere that would take 30 minutes in a car. My wife and I both have cars that get about 18 MPG, between the two of us we're spending about $500 a month just in gas. Buying a hybrid would help but is it worth spending $25,000 or $30,000 to save 2 or 3 thousand a year?

May 28th, 2008	#1 (permalink)
Maxer Moderator Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: USA Age: 34 Posts: 2,491 Name: Devin Johnston	Telecommuting? I don't know how many of you work in an office and how far you have to drive to get there but my daily commute is about 50 miles round trip. With the cost of gas climbing every day I'm starting to look at alternatives, besides buying a new car that gets better gas mileage I've been thinking about telecommuting. The benefits are obvious, the more days I can work at home the less I pay in gas and the hour and 30 minutes I spend in traffic every day can be spent at home with the family. There are several things to consider the most important is can I effectively work from home using a DSL connection to remote login to my work computer? I do this all the time to check on jobs that are in backburner, or to submit jobs for rendering and even to do a little work on images that I didn't have time to get to at work. The problem is the lag time in display refresh I get using this type of connection; it would be much slower than actually sitting at the computer. I don’t know if there is a better software application than remote desktop that would give better display and refresh performance, if there is it’s worth taking a look at. If not then I’d be faced with carrying my 40LB computer to and from work which wouldn’t really work because all of my distributed rendering nodes would still be here as well as all the material and model libraries. I hope that some of you are doing this already and can give me some tips or ideas on the best way to make this work. __________________ “There is no spoon” http://devinjohnston.cgsociety.org/gallery/

May 28th, 2008	#2 (permalink)
SandmanNinja Moderator Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Ballarat, Victoria, Australia Posts: 1,373 Name: Joel Callahan	Re: Telecommuting? I don't think updating the screen via remote access is the way to go. However, if you keep a window open to it, a drive mapped remotely to it or to the same drive mappings as your work computer, then when you render, either submit it via the work computer to the render node or try to get the render network to work via the remote drive mappings. Another way to do it would be a WAN - Wide Area Network - where work would set up a special server, you guys connect thru it, and it's just like you're at the office. __________________ -SandmanNinja website

May 28th, 2008	#3 (permalink)
Chad Warner Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Savannah, GA Posts: 1,436 Name: Chad Warner	Re: Telecommuting? Really I think the main drawback you'll face is the DSL connection. I've got a terribly slow computer at home, but a cable internet connection, so connecting to the office isn't an issue if I need to check the status of jobs or whatever. I wouldn't try to do it over DSL though. If it helps, the App I use (which someone here recommended) is from www.logmein.com they have a free program that is VERY cool, and allows you to login to your computer from any other computer in the world. __________________ _____________ Chad Warner www.bluelimestudio.com

May 28th, 2008	#4 (permalink)
BrianKitts Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Columbus, Ohio Age: 28 Posts: 1,516 Name: Brian Kitts	Re: Telecommuting? Personally I would invest in a decent laptop and get your licenses portable. When I'm on the road I work on my macbook attached to a 500gb external HD and a USB hub with my dongle's for vray and archicad. Add autodesk's PLU for moving around the max license between your work computer and laptop and you're ready to go. I do work at home now and then with that setup, but I normally don't do any major work. Most of the time it's trouble shooting other peoples scenes, modeling, and scene setup or if it's any rendering, I'm mostly doing render regions to check materials after doing small tests with the rendering settings cranked back. A dualcore can get it done. I have a dualcore desktop at home that I'll sometimes DR through for 4 cores. If I need to start a full-res render I upload the scene back to the office through the VPN, use window's remote desktop to access my computer and fire it off on the renderfarm back at the office. Cisco VPN is solid, I'm sure there's other available routes for VPN. You could probably form that into a workable scenario for working from home. One thing I would definitely check into is getting a GoToMeeting account. I do half my work for other offices and that program is clutch for reviewing work and discussing renders/markups remotely. Emailing files and trying to discuss things on the phone is okay, but it's alot easier when you can pass back and forth control of a shared screen and point directly at things so you are sure what each other is talking about. __________________ Brian Kitts ANSHEN + ALLEN

May 29th, 2008	#5 (permalink)
Maxer Moderator Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: USA Age: 34 Posts: 2,491 Name: Devin Johnston	Re: Telecommuting? It sounds like a WAN and a GoToMeeting account are my best choices to make this work. Thanks for the advice! __________________ “There is no spoon” http://devinjohnston.cgsociety.org/gallery/

May 29th, 2008	#6 (permalink)
Jeff Mottle President/Founder Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada Age: 33 Posts: 5,059 Name: Jeff Mottle	Re: Telecommuting? As someone who has telecommuted for the past 5 years, both as a production artist and as someone in management, I can tell you without question no remote desktop, LogMeIn or GoToMeeting is going to give you enough capability to work effectively. Specifically working within the Max interface to do anything other than perhaps press render or set up a job etc. Especially given you will need to connect via a VPN. (see below) You'll either need another workstation for home or a laptop (desktop replacement). You'd work on files locally and render test renders locally, but production renders would be sent back to your farm in the office. As far as file access. I'm not sure what your company security policies are, but you would not want to set up a WAN using a public internet lines without implementing a VPN site to site connection to ensure the security of both of your local networks and files. The problem however is that VPNs must encrypt/decrypt the data on each end, so it slows down transfer speed CONSIDERABLY. Trust me, from experience you will go nuts trying to do this as it's easily 10-20 times slower than accssing a local network. My suggestion would be to have a local mirror of all of your files from work and then sync the two (home and office) at night. This of course does not help you when you just created 5GB of files and now need to push it all to the farm at 2am. You'll have to wait for all of the files to transfer or go to the office and upload them manually. Something I never had the luxury of doing as the office was 1000's of miles away or overseas. __________________ Jeff Mottle CGarchitect.com

May 29th, 2008	#7 (permalink)
Maxer Moderator Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: USA Age: 34 Posts: 2,491 Name: Devin Johnston	Re: Telecommuting? Oh that's what I was afraid of. The problem is that I use distributed rendering all the time just to do tests; I'd either have to take a rack server's worth of hardware home with me or get a couple of those 16 core machines from Boxx. It's not looking good for telecommuting; I might have to get an electric car it would probably cost less than the two Boxx machines __________________ “There is no spoon” http://devinjohnston.cgsociety.org/gallery/

May 29th, 2008	#10 (permalink)
Maxer Moderator Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: USA Age: 34 Posts: 2,491 Name: Devin Johnston	Re: Telecommuting? The problem is you guy's have been paying higher prices for a long time, we've seen a 400% increase within the last year or two. Places like Houston are so spread out that it's imposable to get anywhere unless you drive 10 or 20 miles. Public transportation is a joke unless you want to spend hours on the bus to get somewhere that would take 30 minutes in a car. My wife and I both have cars that get about 18 MPG, between the two of us we're spending about $500 a month just in gas. Buying a hybrid would help but is it worth spending $25,000 or $30,000 to save 2 or 3 thousand a year? __________________ “There is no spoon” http://devinjohnston.cgsociety.org/gallery/

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