RenderFarm Commander and LW8

[brayne]

Hi all,

I have been getting a lot of questions regarding RenderFarm Commander and its compatability with LightWave 8. I have recently posted version 2.2.2 on my website, and it resolves some of the LW8 issues. There is now a "LightWave 8" preference option that should correct any problems related to the automatic node setup.

The only other problem that exists is related to split rendering. This will be resolved within the next day or two, and I will post a new message on this thread once the new version is available.

Thanks!

[Ade]

Ill look forward to buying this when my new g5 comes in. I was just thinking Bruce, as a cosmetic thing, do u think renderfarm would look good if it shared a lw8 UI theme?....Just a fun thought..
Might put screamernet to shame if it actually looked part of lw8..instead of 3rd party.

[brayne]

I might get myself in trouble with Newtek if I do that!

[brayne]

RenderFarm Commander now has full compatibility with LightWave version 8. Version 2.2.4 is available for download from my website.

[theechap]

Bruce,

I wish I could say that I love your program but right now I'm frustrated. (Don't worry though - it's probably a user error!)

We have LW8 here and today we bought the hobby version of 2.2.6. I followed your instructions (more than once) but when I run the node checker, i get the following errors in red:

LightWave Extensions Preferences not found
Layout Preferences not found
Modeler Preferences not found
Hub Preferences not found

I have double (and triple) checked that the prefs are in the hd:user:name:library:prefs folder and that the cmdline files in the lw8:programs folder point to that directory.

We have tried a safe build but it does the same thing. I know it has got to be something really silly but I can't figure it out. (again, most likely a user error :) )

let me know if you have any ideas.

eddie

[brayne]

Eddie, can you do me a favor and email me the "LWSN cmdLine" file from inside your problem node folder.

Email it to:

support@brucerayne.com

Don't worry, we'll get you running in no time!

Bruce

[roberthurt]

You know, I kept running into that kind of error myself (specifically, Extensions not found)... after a VERY CAREFUL reading through RFC's manual I realized my config files were missing ":" characters at the end of the paths.

Bruce, might you be able to make RFC a little more tolerant of trailing colons (or absence thereof)? They seem to be left out by default (well, I can't remember mucking about with those files myself before).

Haven't tried configuring for 8 yet...

Robert

[roberthurt]

Bruce,

While I'm at it, I had a couple of questions/suggestions for RF Commander, which has been a LIFESAVER the last couple of weeks with a very intensive render project I'm working on.

First of all, I tend to run two single-threaded LWSN's on DP machines (I suppose I could switch this around a bit, but I've seen suggestions that multithreaded LWSN's can run into problems...). In any event, it would be handy to have the LWSN nodes named differently to make it easier to see which is which.

I've been loathe to muck around with this since I've got everything working, but in principle could I just rename the LWSN and LWSN cmdline files in each folder and achieve this?

Second, I think the email notification is awesome, but with some of the HUGE renders I'm doing over weekends at work I find I'd really like to be able to get periodic updates, not just at the end of a render. What would you think about adding an "Email update every N hours" option? I imagine it could be pretty simple... tell the last frame farmed out, time per frame, est. completion time, and maybe the status of all the active CPU's (esp. if it thinks one crashed!).

Third, as far as I can tell, RFC really wants to put all its files in the root level of the content directory. Would it be possible to get it to store all the jobfiles, etc. in a specified subdirectory of the content directory? I tried doing this myself with the current version, but it seemed unhappy that it couldn't find files that way.

Finally, I had a very odd crash last night, not with RFC, but on a render node. One of 4 macs I'm using died with a hard crash. Oddly, RFC totally stalled out at this point, not delivering new orders to the other render nodes, which were all happily waiting. I quit RFC (it was still responsive) and restated it, but it never came back up properly.

Once I restarted the crashed mac, everything worked fine. My question is do you know of something a remote node could do when it crashes that could cause this behavior? I'm afraid I didn't think to check the jobfiles... I suppose one might have been corrupted if the mac crashed just as it was writing the file, but it seems kinda odd.

Anyway, thanks for such a great piece of code!

Robert

[brayne]

Hi Robert, thanks for all the info.

I will definitely take some of those suggestions on board. I especially like the idea of a periodic email update.

You should be able to move your node folders to any location on the hard disk you like, but the Prefs and Extentions can't be moved. This may be changed in a future version though.

With regards to your crash, there is a possibility that the crash of the node damaged the "ack" file for that node. ScreamerNet and RenderFarm Commander talk to each other by leaving little text files for each other. They are the "job" and "ack" (acknowledge) files. RenderFarm Commander probably got hung up trying to read a corrupt "ack" file. Once you re-started the problem node, it erased the damaged file, which fixed the problem.

I'll try and come up with some way of identifying the node settings in the filename or folder name. Don't forget that you can always run Commander Node Checker to get a quick report on the settings of each node.

Feel Free to rename LWSN, but don't rename the LWSN Command line!

I'll make RFC more tolerant about the trailing colons too.

Thanks for your input!

Bruce