G5 as master and g4 as render slave

[rubixstarr]

I wanted to know if anyone knows how to set up the computer to use the G5 as the primary computer and use another G4 as a render slave. Does anyone know how to do this or anyone know any sites that I can go to that explains how to set up how to do this? Thanks for anyone's help. peace

[mlinde]

If you are talking about a simple 2-Mac render network, there are tons of tutorials online for setting up a network, setting up screamernet, and general configuration to make it work. The type of CPU is irrelevant.

[paintboy]

go here.one place to start.like mlinde says, the flavor(g4/g5/g99?) does not matter.
may i also suggest Beer&cigarettes, to calm yer nerves, and a good sturdy hat(to keep you from pullin all your hair out) acompetent typist,voodoomask,
proofreader, and psychic counselor, an magic wand if you have one....it can be done.
http://www.catalystproductions.cc/screamernet/
:D

[rubixstarr]

Thanks a lot! The replies has opened up new doors of much needed information and knowledge!! Thanks again!!

[Johnny]

Any help on this would be appreciated..

I'm trying to set up Screamernet again, this time on my G5, and I'm using Dirk's tutorial as a guide.

Things aren't working for me, and I notice that for one thing, Layout won't 'remember' when I tell it which directory to use. If I quite Layout and launch it again, it reverts right back to default, and not to lwprojects>nodetest, as in Dirk's example.

Is there something about the G5 or about 10.2.7 that is a problem with this.

I really need to get screamer working, but looking forward to the process as much as I look forward to dysentary..

thanks!

Johnny

[Ade]

Screamernet doesnt work for macs, its a piece of crap, u can try all u want and it will always find some way to take that away from u, try looking at screamer controller or ameleto, these are 3rd party renderers.

[Johnny]

Originally posted by Ade
Screamernet doesnt work for macs, its a piece of crap, u can try all u want and it will always find some way to take that away from u, try looking at screamer controller or ameleto, these are 3rd party renderers.

ok..I give up..

can you tell me where I can find these renderers?

thanks!

J

[NonPlanar]

Screamernet doesnt work for macs, its a piece of crap, u can try all u want and it will always find some way to take that away from u, try looking at screamer controller or ameleto, these are 3rd party renderers.

Eh, Screamernet works fine for me on my macs... I have no G5... but gimme one and I;ll make it work... :-)

Anyway, I emailed Johnny to see if I can help him trouble-shoot.

The 3rd party screamernet controller is nice, yes, especially for x-platform rendering (something you can't do without it) but it's also has a price tag...

:rolleyes:


DIRK

[3dSquirrel]

Howsit guys, got a problem that i could really use your help with: - I'm working off of a G5 Dual Processor with 3 GIGS DDR Ram. The rendering time remains the same, and from what I've heard it's supposed to be faster the more RAM you use - Do I have to enable the ammount of Ram I want use, and where and how do I apply this? Please, some help would be greatly appreciated down here in South Africa. The faster the reply the better: - just got the RAM and very keen to push the Mac to another level. From 3dSquirrel - ryan.crocker@sesalos.com

[NonPlanar]

I hate stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious is overseen cuz it is so obvious....

Have you turned on multithreading (render panel) to activate both cpus?

[3dSquirrel]

The obvious has been stated, and yes, in the rendering options tablet I set the multithreading to 8 threads first- the rendering time was 2min 19, with the threads set at 2 the rendering time was 1min 19, however, the scene is not a large scene and I feel the rendering speed is still not up to scratch. I had a look and it seems that whilst rendering lightwave uses more virtual memory than anything else - how do I speed up the rendering? I really believed it was just a case of putting extra memmory in and 'v-oila,' there are no hypervoxels, sasquatch, or skytracer (large scene, memory users) in my scene, so what, where and how does one go about getting both CPU's to function and reduce rendering times? Thanks for the reply, but another speedy reply with some answers is most definately in need. Cheers 3dSquirrel.

[Ade]

I do no5t understand how screamernet works.
I hear u cannot render sasquatch use scenes, hypervoxels etc..Then whats the point of it?

I feel screamernet is one of Lightwaves non documented or updated feature that could be soo good if it were.
On the mac it barely works thus causing us to pay extra for controller that does what screamer should.

[Johnny]

so, you're saying that *nobody* on the mac side can get screamer net to work on animations involving sasquath, hypervoxels, etc?

J

[jdavidbakr]

Originally posted by Ade
I hear u cannot render sasquatch use scenes, hypervoxels etc..Then whats the point of it?
Sasquach lite won't render over screamernet, but the full version will. Hypervoxels work fine - in fact, most of my network renders have been heavy hypervoxel scenes. You just have to save the particles to a file.

ScreamerNet works great (using my controller, of course :D ), I have rendered most of my scenes with it with very little trouble.

[mlinde]

Screamernet works pretty well even without jon's controller. It isn't a Mac-style app though -- very techy. I've written a couple of LScripts to help users along, but even those don't overcome network setup issues.

[Johnny]

Originally posted by NonPlanar
Anyway, I emailed Johnny to see if I can help him trouble-shoot.

MANY thanks to Dirk..

I'm not really keen on command-line stuff, and your help was..um...a big help!

G5 is now screamering..

also helped that I launched LWSN app, too! (d'oh)

Johnny

[NonPlanar]

So there... as promised... I got a G5, and I said Screamernet would run... well here you are:
(and yes, the slave is a DP G4 450

[skippy]

My initial SN testing showed something that I'm not sure how to interpret: on the Host DP G5, in process viewer, each of 4 SN nodes was using about 48 or 49 percent of CPU cycles, whereas on the 'slave' DP G4, Process Viewer showed only one instance of LWSN, and it was bouncing between 0.1 and 5.05 percent CPU usage.

Does this mean that the G4 was only doing a little of the processing; not it's fair share?

Menu Meters on the G5 was solid blue until that last frame was rendered, whereas on the G4, there were cyclical spikes in Menu Meters, where, presumably, the G4 was doing *some* work, but didn't look like it was as fully occupied as the G5 was.

If anything, you'd expect the G4 to be processing at full tilt to do its share of the rendering..(even tho the G5 would actually accomplish more).

any thoughts?

J

[Johnny]

are ALL the copies of LWSN run from the Host Mac? IOW, if you have 3 Macs and a total of 5 nodes, do all SN copies (LWSN, LWSN2, LWSN3...) run *from* the host Mac, or do their need to be one copy each on each of the node Machines? I tried the latter scenario, which failed, but running all copies of LWSN on the host mac doesn't seem to get the node Macs to working; process viewer shows little/no activity when those macs are supposedly involved in Screamernetting.

thanks!

J

[jdavidbakr]

You can set it up either way, it is easiest to set it up where you are launching LWSN over the network. Have you followed any of the tutorials on how to set it up? Don't mix and match them, as they have subtle differences that will not mesh well together, but if you take one of the tutorials and follow it you should get good results, and then if you are having difficulty you can post your specific problem and there are lots of folks on this message board who will be able to help you out.

[Johnny]

thank you, Jon;

I have been going with Dirk's tutorial, and I know that it works with my DP G5.. when I initiate Screamer, MenuMeters shows both CPUs going full bore. Sometimes with dips in the case of lower-antialiased values, and when the next frame is loaded..there's that moment of decreased activity in between.

when I include my DP G4 in the mix, the Network Render panel finds all 4 cpus and reports that fact, but when I monitor the G4 during a screamer session, there's no evidence in Process Viewer that it's actually doing anything other than sitting there...

I have all 4 LWSNx copies on the Host G5, along with all 4 LWSNx cmdlines (where x is the number of copy).

If I say 4CPUs but don't have the G4 online, the Network Panel only reports 2 Screamernet CPUs found, so I guess this proves in a sense that it knows when they are or are not available.

I'm just not convinced that the G4's chips are actually being utilized...

Last June when I had SN going with my G4 and my iBook, all 3 nodes going, both machines were so fully occupied with rendering, that they were nearly unusuable for anything else; the G4 doesn't behave that way when it's a SN node.

J

[jdavidbakr]

Does the G4 look like it is rendering (i.e. the output panel showing the status)? Is it running Jaguar or Panther? You could always try rendering a scene with all 4 LWSN copies, and then running 4 LWSN copies all from the G5 and manually time it to see if it is the same (as it would be if the G4 is merely showing the window but using the G5's processors). I don't know why the G4 wouldn't be using its own processors, unless you are using Panther and they changed the way program linking works in Panther, which I would be surprised (not extremely surprised, but surprised nonetheless)

[Johnny]

Originally posted by jdavidbakr
Does the G4 look like it is rendering (i.e. the output panel showing the status)? Is it running Jaguar or Panther? You could always try rendering a scene with all 4 LWSN copies, and then running 4 LWSN copies all from the G5 and manually time it to see if it is the same (as it would be if the G4 is merely showing the window but using the G5's processors). I don't know why the G4 wouldn't be using its own processors, unless you are using Panther and they changed the way program linking works in Panther, which I would be surprised (not extremely surprised, but surprised nonetheless)

Hi, Jon;

thanks again...I've since learned, after calling Apple, that my G5 User folder has something about it corrupt such that the G4 can't get at or see the contents of the G5 Applications ƒ, and therefore can't launch those LWSN3 adn LWSN4...trying to remedy it now,.

it's always something!

J

[Johnny]

Apple's solution to my woes was to make a new user, which I did...I'm back to working on my file, but I can neither Save nor run Screamernet session..

I get errors "Can't Open Scene File" and "Can't open c:lwprojects:nodetest:job1" and so on with job2, job3, etc..

I'm about climbing the walls herre..I've fixed my permissions..

is there somethingmore I can do or are my files all corrupst now?

J

[jdavidbakr]

Yeah, you are going to run into that permissions problem with a new user. Probably what has happened is the content directory has permissions set where your new user cannot write to the directory. You will need to change the permissions to at least where all users can read and write. With a quick check of VersionTracker I found this app: BatChmod (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12057) that may do this for you quickly (can't vouch, never used the program, but it looks like what you will need to keep from having to go through and change each file one by one...)

[Johnny]

yeah...batchmod handled it in a way that my manually giving permissions didn't

I can now save that file..

not only that, but the G4 is currently helping with Screamernetting to the extent you'd expect..

I have a scene with caustics, and all CPUs seem to be pulling their share of the load.

Thanks for the boost...it was a help in unravelling the problems!

Johnny

edit: I'm rendering NTSC size frames now at a lower anti-aliasing setting, caustics on, 2 lights. the G5 is turning in slightly more than 3 frames to the G4's 1!

[somnambulance]

So now how about with Lightwave 8?

[monovich]

I'm using a G5 as my master computer to control a 10 node Screamernet network with the help of Screamernet Controller. Works excellent. I had some trouble with Hypervoxels, but I didn't troubleshoot much before giving up.

I just set up the first two nodes for the G5 computer, then duplicate them i n the same directory to make a total of 10, then modify their respective config files for the job and ack numbers. After that, on all the slave computers I just mount the G5's hard drive and launch the nodes off of it. This keeps the config files easy to make because they are all the same.

Screamernet Controller handles the rest. Usually I'm running 8 LWSN nodes on my other computers and working on a new scene or a modification on the G5 while the others render.

The help and tutorial files that came with screamernet controller helped me figure out how to set up my config files right.

works like a charm.

[macsupremacist]

Wouldn't everything be easier if someone wrote a script so Lightwave could set up a render farm with Xgrid? :)

[eblu]

right,
xgrid, and screamernet. Lets just say that they are mutually incompatible and leave it at that.

[Zarathustra]

Dirk's tut is the best. The only thing that would not allow SN to work with his tut is problems with permissions, corrupt files/folder, etc. If your systems are fine and you follow his instructions SN will be at your control.

[somnambulance]

Maybe I missed it, but I cant seem to find Dirks tut on it anymore, if it was ever on this thread. You should post a link. I printed it out, so I am set, but for the future.