ScreamerNet & image saving across networks

[Matt]

After giving up on ScreamerNet a while ago, I decided to give
it another go!

Amazingly I managed to make it work!!!

Oh the joy!!! :)

However, the only thing that isn't working is the image saving
part, which kinda buggers things up a tad!

Access privilages are fine I've double-checked that.

I've also tried using UNC naming (\\sharename\framestore) and
mapped network drives (S:) neither work.

Rendering starts, I see all the status okay, but when it comes to saving
the image saver plugin fails.

As a last test I tried rendering within LightWave (no screamernet)
and told it to save across the network. It too failed.

Is it something I've forgotton on our network or do some of the
image saver plugins not work across a network?

I'm using the LW_PICT image saver.

A work around would be make them save locally I guess, but it'd
be nice to save in one place.

Any ideas?

[Matt]

sorted it!

did a test locally to make sure the plugin was definately working,
it wasn't.

despite the fact that I did a search / replace for on all configs and
LWSN was using the correct configs, the paths in the LWEXT3.cfg
file weren't quite correct.

I re-scanned the plugins (something I never did) and noticed
the following:

This is a regular entry in LWEXT3.cfg file


{ Entry
Class "AnimLoaderHandler"
Name "AVI(.avi)"
Module "C:\\LightWave\\Plugins\\Input-Output\\Avi.p"
}


Here's the screamernet version I editied by search/replace:


{ Entry
Class "AnimLoaderHandler"
Name "AVI(.avi)"
Module "\\Dualxeon\\Screamernet_content\\Plugins\\Input-Output\\Avi.p"
}


And here's the entry after re-scanning:


{ Entry
Class "AnimLoaderHandler"
Name "AVI(.avi)"
Module "\\\\Dualxeon\\Screamernet_content\\Plugins\\Input-Output\\Avi.p"
}


Note the FOUR slashes at the front, rather than the conventional
two, very odd, and very confusing!

Once I changed that everything worked!

- - -

I think I'm going to write a tutorial on ScreamerNet because I still
feel all the ones I read left small things out or assumed too much.

I'm going to write a tutorial I wish I had from the beginning, because if
I can get screamernet to work - anyone can!!!

:)

Matt

[trentonia]

Check out http://www.respower.com . These guys have 500GHz of proc power and can render stuff at lightning speeds. They also have a FAQ and notes section where they discuss file management for rendering accross networks. The owner of the company has an article in the latest Keyframe mag.