Best render manager given my situation?

[Tom Wood]

Hello,

I have a dual Xeon hyperthreaded machine, so four render nodes - two actual, two virtual, all four show in Task Manager and Screamernet. I'm doing animation scenes that are about 4000 frames long. Each frame takes only 3 seconds to render. Using Screamernet by itself, most of the nodes are always 'waiting' for the next job/frame to be served to them. At any given time, there is seldom more than one node working, while the other three are either 'waiting' or preparing a job.

Is there a render manager program that would optimize this better? What I really want is a program that would serve 1000 frames to each node all at once at the beginning, say 'go!', and then collect the frames into the proper order as they come in.

This is the only task the render manager would have, so I'd want one that is specifically good at this, not one with other bells and whistles. Not that I dislike bells and whistles, I'm just sayin'....:D

Thanks,

[faulknermano]

try:

http://www.dstorm.co.jp/english/plugin/other.htm#LWSNC

not really a mode 2 solution, but with four nodes it shouldnt be hard to set up. i suggest running lwsnc from a networked location.

[Tom Wood]

Thanks,

This is the first time I've heard of "modes" regarding Screamernet. Since they mention the same term on that website, I assume that isn't a typo for "nodes". What's a "mode"?

[BloodQuest]

Mode 1 (obsolete) is with Amiga master controller a DEC Alpha slave.

Mode 2 is standard

Mode 3 lets you run from a DOS prompt, and this is what you probably want in these circumstances.

It is documented and probably best if you get your head around that - it's not that hard to do.

Assuming you're using version 9, it's on page 401 of the Surface and Render manual.

You wouldn't need anything that you don't already have.

Simon

[Tom Wood]

I'm running LW 8.5, but I'll look into it.

Thanks!

[BloodQuest]

For 8.X, you'll find it among the online help files:

LightWave_85\Documentation\Help\Distributed_Render ing__Introduction_.htm

Or on page 804 of the LW 8 manual.

Simon

[Tom Wood]

For 8.X, you'll find it among the online help files:

LightWave_85\Documentation\Help\Distributed_Render ing__Introduction_.htm

Or on page 804 of the LW 8 manual.

Simon

Thanks Simon,

I got LW 7.5 with VT3 and then upgraded to LW8.5 with VT4. I only have the LW 7 paper manual, and it doesn't seem to include any discussion of 'modes'.

If you don't mind, could you provide a full link to the online help files, I can't invent any combination that gets me a valid URL using the partial link you gave above.

[Tom Wood]

Cancel that, Newtek tech support is helping me log into my profile. It's been a while since I needed this info, so I guess things have changed a bit.

[Tom Wood]

I'm following the syntax in the manual exactly, and triple checked the paths and content directory, and I keep getting

Current directory is now "C:\correctdirectoryname".
Loading "scenename.lws".
Error: Can't open scene file.

Also, the manual says use a -d switch in front of the config path, but the syntax given at the command prompt says use -q. There's also something about a -1 log file that the manual doesn't mention.

Help?

[faulknermano]

Also, the manual says use a -d switch in front of the config path, but the syntax given at the command prompt says use -q. There's also something about a -1 log file that the manual doesn't mention.

no, the switch is -c for the config path. -d is for content directory. it'd help if you post the batch file you're running.

[Tom Wood]

no, the switch is -c for the config path. -d is for content directory. it'd help if you post the batch file you're running.

Thanks,

I must not be understanding this right. The batch files are for when I'm running nodes in Mode 2. In Mode 3 I'm running LWSN from the command line, so where would the batch files enter into this?

Which raises the further question, how does Mode 3 help me here at all anyway since I'm running a single machine with four nodes? (Two Xeon processors, hyperthreaded) If I understand it right, Mode 3 can only use a machine as a whole as a batch renderer, not the individual nodes. Wouldn't I need more machines to get any benefit from Mode 3?

[Tom Wood]

In any case, here's the batch file for the first of four nodes:

## Launch a Screamernet node
## Edit the directory paths to suit your system
echo Node 1
cd c:\vt4\lightwave\programs
LWSN.exe -2 -dc:\athnlightwave\ -cc:\asncommand\config c:\asncommand\sncommand\job1 c:\asncommand\sncommand\ack1

[Tom Wood]

And here's what I'm entering at the command line:

cd C:\vt4\lightwave\programs

LWSN -3 -cC:\asncommand\config -dC:\athnlightwave\ mode.lws 1 200 1

Where "mode" is the name of a scene file, with no spaces in the names I'm using.

[3D Kiwi]

Try Deadline from www.franticfilms.com. It has a free trial that gives you two free nodes to use. It will only use one node on one machine, eg if you have a duel cpu machine it will only open one node, but will use all cpus. You can set the task size to what you want and it will render them without pauses.

Eg you have a scene with 1000 frames, you assign a task limit of 1000 and it will only have to load lwsn once and then render all 1000 straight after each other with no pause. This ( on quick scenes like yours) will render faster than if you had four nodes running but pausing between each frame.

[Tom Wood]

Try Deadline from www.franticfilms.com. It has a free trial that gives you two free nodes to use. It will only use one node on one machine, eg if you have a duel cpu machine it will only open one node, but will use all cpus. You can set the task size to what you want and it will render them without pauses.

Eg you have a scene with 1000 frames, you assign a task limit of 1000 and it will only have to load lwsn once and then render all 1000 straight after each other with no pause. This ( on quick scenes like yours) will render faster than if you had four nodes running but pausing between each frame.

Thanks, I'll take a peek. But how is that different from just telling LightWave to render scene? Using my dual Xeon machine it still takes five seconds per frame, but Task Manager is showing a total CPU usage of about 30%. The two 'virtual processors' are barely engaged at all when using the entire machine rather than each node.

[3D Kiwi]

Its different because you can pause the render if needed, add more scenes, and they way deadline is set up it you can still work while it renders, i would also turn off hyper threading, i had it on my duel xeon and seamed to work better with out it on.