Renering on multiple machines

[rcgauer]

Hello.... I have been looking through the forum and wiki for info on how to render files created in my Terragen 3 Professional + Animation... using search terms like "network render" or "render nodes" without much luck. Can someone point me to information on how to render on multiple networked machines? I hope/believe Prodessional includes the ability to render off on three other machines in addition to the PC running the app?

thanks
rg

[TheBadger]

I believe that TG3 comes with 3 render nodes standard with an option to buy as many more as you like. Check the sales page

Upgrade price

Terragen 2 to Terragen 3 Professional (1 user license, 3 render nodes): $199
Terragen 2 to Terragen 3 Professional with Animation (1 user license, 5 render nodes): $349

I believe you simple install copies of TG on the 3 PCs, but someone else will tell you for sure.
http://planetside.co.uk/buy/tg3-price-list

[rcgauer]

Right.... I do understand that I am allowed to render on multiple machines... I am looking for instructions on how to set up the additional machines...

[TheBadger]

Ahh yes, sorry. Well there has been lots of posts on that. All the conversations used the term "render manager" though. That may help you find more?

Did you see this on the wikki? http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Terragen_Resource_List#Render_Managers

[rcgauer]

That's it!

[TheBadger]

 

[Oshyan]

Your license does come with additional render nodes, but there is currently no built-in system for taking advantage of them. You can distribute renders to your other machines manually, by sharing a TGD file on a network for example. Using this method you can render either different still frames (different angles of the same scene, or different setting tests) simultaneously, you can render different crop areas of a single larger render (use a GI cache file and add a little overlap on each crop to make sure they stitch well), or you can render different sequences of frames from an animation, for example frames 1-25 on machine 1, 26-50 on machine 2, etc.

The other option, as linked to above, is to use a Render Manager. This has a higher setup complexity and difficulty, but makes managing multiple render jobs much easier in the long run. There are several free options listed in the wiki.

- Oshyan

[rcgauer]

Thanks.... I am going to read and digest....

[rcgauer]

Oshyan.... as I read your post, I wonder: Does that mean I can use the Terragen installer I downloaded on those three machines, provided I only use them for rendering? Or is there a separate render app I am not seeing?

[Oshyan]

Yep, same installer. Sorry I didn't clarify that earlier, I had meant to.

- Oshyan

[rcgauer]

Thanks.... I'll shoot you a jpg if we make anything interesting.... and thanks for all of the assistance getting to this point.

[Oshyan]

No problem Ralph. Didn't notice it was you until just now.

- Oshyan

[visualaspirant]

Just trying to read up on this a bit myself and am wondering, is this info still good?

I'm pretty low on networking knowledge, so for minimal setup, is simply using the same .tgd file on different machines for rendering and manually assigning which frames to render the way to go?

[Oshyan]

Yes, that's still the easiest way to do it, and it's what I do in most cases myself. Running a proper distributed render manager locally to handle only a couple of machines is generally overkill. The main benefit such systems *may* offer you is to better distribute the rendering load dynamically. Say you have 3 computers that all have varying processor power and so they render the same scene in different times. You could make a guess based on a sample frame render on each machine as to how many frames each one will complete in a similar time and then distribute frame ranges accordingly, but a render manager application will be able to dynamically send new frames to each machine to render as soon as the previous one is done. So it will potentially utilize your resources more efficiently. In practice you can usually estimate reasonably well, or adjust "on the fly" if needed when doing manual management of distributed rendering.

- Oshyan