issue configuring LWSN with Matt Gorner's tuto

[Lightwolf]

now I'm not sure we understand well each other…
...
Just tell me for example what YOU have
as paths in your lwext3.cfg ?

(The 'general' issue is that while just organizing
files like you say and like Matt says it should
work and one should'nt have to modify
paths in config files… Why does it happen
to me I don't know but that's it).

Well, it should work like Matt said if all machines can reach the same files using the same path, so, if you install LW on, hm, drive l:\ , and connect that to all other machines as l:\, it will work.

This is a line out of my config:

{ Entry
  Class "AnimLoaderHandler"
  Name "QuickTime"
  Module "\\\\Gadget-hq\\Lightwave\\LW75\\Plugins\\Input-output\\Qttools.p"
}

Can you show me your .bat files? May be copy&paste one of them, and then we'll see and find out.

I'll fix it for you so you don't need any local copy of LW, but this will only work if you have an lwext#.cfg that uses UNC.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Matt]

Okay, let's start over! Lasco, can you answer these please:


1) Where is your main LightWave installed?

2) Where have you put all your Content files?

3) Where did you put the config file folders?

4) Where have you put the 'Command' folder?


Cheers
Matt

 

[lasco]

OK thanx to you guys,
I appreciate your help…
Now one after the other

Lightwolf >

OK the line you gave me looks much like
I think I should hit too, I'm gonna try this
right now. According to all I did until now
I guessed it should work with something
like this…

mm… hard to give you immediatly a .bat file,
I'm here on a Mac (for internet) that is not connected to the network so should burn
a CD. However I'll do this if necessary but
let me know what do you need :
- the .bat file when "not working" ? Which is
actually few paths according to Matt's tuto

or
- what is displayed by the .bat file when the
node works (all instructions on rendering process) - in that second case I have to
re-save it with a log file using the way you
gave me yesterday…


Now Matt >
1/ Main Lightwave is installed on HD "C:",
in the directory "Program Files" (default Windows directory) on a machine called "Tour" on the network. I copied on all other machines (nodes) just the "programs" directory of LW, directly on each node, on HD that are also called "C:"
So I have in "Tour" this :
C:\Program Files\Lightwave\[full LW installation, including "config" and "config_sn" folders, as well as sn_init.bat file for the case I
use this machine itself as a node]

And on other machines :
C:\Program Files\lightwave\programs
and also
C:\Program Files\lightwave\sn_init1.bat


2/ Content is on another partition of my HD
on my main machine, called D:
Which gives us :
D:\Content


3/ As I said, my config folders ('config' and 'config_sn') are both located in the folder
"Lightwave" on my main machine.
C:\Program Files\Lightwave\config
and
C\Program Files\Lightwave\config_sn
Of course there are copies of lw3.cfg and
lwext3.cfg in both 'config' and 'config_sn'
directories, as well as I followed exactly
your tip to switch the paths with Layout
shortcuts depending on the working use
or the screamernet rendering use.

4/ The command folder is also in the "Lightwave" folder of my main machine.

Now I must say as long as was making tests
I at the end finished by sharing almost all
my directories of the main machine.
Which means that are shared :
Lightwave directory (as 'lightwave' on the network)
Content directory
config and config_sn directories
command directory
and even the rendering directory where
frames should be written (and which is
located on disk D: of my main machine.

Note : the partition of the disk is made so that
I have a small partition for OS and programs (C)
and a large one for files (Content and renderings).
Nodes are also partitioned disks but
I think these partitions are not concerned,
I at present only used for them the
disks "C" to copy my LW programs directory,
that's all.

 

[Lightwolf]

...I meant your sc_init1.bat file.

If your lwext#.cfg contains all UNC paths to the plugins with double slashes, and you use somthing like:

LWSN.exe -2 -d\\Tour\content -c\\tour\lightwave\config
\\tour\lightwave\command\job# \\tour\lightwave\command\ack#

should all one line

then it should work.

You could also just use this:

\\tour\lightwave\programs\LWSN.exe -2 -d\\Tour\content 
-c\\tour\lightwave\config \\tour\lightwave\command\job# \\tour\lightwave\command\ack#

should all one line

Cheers,
Mike

 

[lasco]

OK as I thought… it works now, perfectly.

I just changed a line in the lwext3.cfg file,
according to the line Lightwolf just gave
and now it's OK.

I typed for the plugin PNG image saver

\\\\Tour\\lightwave\\Plugins…etc.

Instead of
C:\\Program Files\\Lightwave\\Plugins…etc.

(where 'lightwave' is the network name
of the directory 'Lightwave' on my main machine)

I'm not sure now I understand why only this
way works but that's it.
The fact is that from the moment
the disks with programs on all machines
are called 'C:' I could expect that LWSN
would not be able to make the difference
between them while it is able to now
that I changed all my paths using
a 'network' naming and shared folders names.
But the strange thing is that Matt you did not
seem to point this in your tuto while
it's very often that by default HD are
called 'C:'
So what or when did I something wrong that
forced me to change all these paths ???

 

[Lightwolf]

OK as I thought… it works now, perfectly.

I just changed a line in the lwext3.cfg file,
according to the line Lightwolf just gave
and now it's OK.

I typed for the plugin PNG image saver

\\\\Tour\\lightwave\\Plugins…etc.

Instead of
C:\\Program Files\\Lightwave\\Plugins…etc.

Great, good to see you got it to work.

The thing is, C:\ is always (well, in 99% of all cases) the drive letter for the starting partition of a system, and if I try to open something from C:\, it will always be from the _local_ disk. And since you don't have the plugins there, lwsn can't find them.

I can't remember Matt's tute, but did he have LW on c:\ or on another drive?

Cheers,
Mike

 

[lasco]

If your lwext#.cfg contains all UNC paths to the plugins with double slashes, and you use somthing like:

code:
LWSN.exe -2 -d\\Tour\content -c\\tour\lightwave\config \\tour\lightwave\command\job# \\tour\lightwave\command\ack#

You pointed right… but just in the 'wrong' sense.
I mean that from the beginning my .bat file was
written exactly the way you just typed here,
BUT my lwext3.cfg was NOT made of
UNC paths… I have to change them all now.

But - question for Matt, maybe - why Matt
did'nt you talk about this UNC stuff for
config files in you tuto ?
Am I the first one meeting this issue ?

 

[lasco]

I can't remember Matt's tute, but did he have LW on c:\ or on another drive?

Precisely !
Matt's tuto, even if very clear, does not
talk about any C:\ or whatever DRIVE,
he only uses what you call UNC paths,
just like your 'gadget' machine or my 'Tour' one,
but on the other hand he does not mention
the fact that config files themselfs do not
'update' automatically according to this kind of paths !!

 

[Lightwolf]

Matt's tuto, even if very clear, does not
talk about any C:\ or whatever DRIVE,
he only uses what you call UNC paths,
just like your 'gadget' machine or my 'Tour' one,
but on the other hand he does not mention
the fact that config files themselfs do not
'update' automatically according to this kind of paths !!

Well, in that case give him a good whipping when he comes into this thread the next time

But it is good to see you got it to work, and I'm sure Matt will use the information we gathered next time he updates his Tutorial (if he does, right Matt?).

Cheers,
Mike - who's never seen a thread with that many \\'s

 

[lasco]

Well, in that case give him a good whipping when he comes into this thread the next time

be sure we won't ever see him anymore here,
shame on him must be terrific now and
I guess he just read these last posts and
is now crying beyond his computer…

 

[Lightwolf]

be sure we won't ever see him anymore here,
shame on him must be terrific now and
I guess he just read these last posts and
is now crying beyond his computer…

lasco, you forgot the and as well as the and

I'm sure Matt isn't that easily scared off , he's

Cheers,
Mike

 

[lasco]

ok just kidding,

now folks let me thank you very much for your help.
If this can help you to see how helpfull it was
I'll just tell you that I decided to switch from Mac
to PC more than 3 months ago, precisely to
be able to render on a network (yes it's possible
on Mac too but not exactly for the same price, hem…).

I started to buy pieces of PC in may,
it took me more than 1 month to get everything
+ had many troubles with the hardware question.
Then took weeks to built everything waiting
for friends that could help me,
and at the end I just spend the last 10 days
fighting with the nodes to try to make
Amleto work (Amleto that is supposed
to configure 'simply' the LWSN rendering…).
Although Amleto's developpers were kind
and did their best their soft did not stop
bugging and of course they were assuming
that MY network and MY OS was having issues…

And now, after 2 days here at LAST everything
works fine…fffiuuuuu !
Thanx to you Lightwolf and Matt,
I was almost to give up with 3D, sincerly

 

[Lightwolf]

Thanx to you Lightwolf and Matt,
I was almost to give up with 3D, sincerly

Hehe, you're welcome.
And don't worry, doing decent 3D ius much harder than setting up screamernet, and takes even more time to learn, but I'm sure you know that

Now, as a next step, you could try Spider or LightNet to free your LW license from the hard work of controlling the nodes

Cheers,
Mike

 

[lasco]

And don't worry, doing decent 3D ius much harder than setting up screamernet, and takes even more time to learn, but I'm sure you know that

I know, I know
Though there was emmergency on rendering times, especiallly because I see more and more
big companies (well I say 'big', relatively to me
since I'm alone) challenging me, that have
much more machines and equipements…
it was really time to speed up and not
staying with my dual 800 Mhz G4 while
the others have render farms with tens of Ghz
hehe…

 

[Matt]

I did talk about UNC naming! Page 4!

I didn't talk about UNC naming within the LWEXT.cfg file because you don't need to open up your LWEXT.cfg file and edit anything! (Although you can do it that way if you want!)

Page 11 of the tutorial tells you to load your 'ScreamerNet' version of LightWave (so you're editing the config files inside config_sn) and scan your plugins/lscripts using a network aware path (page 12) this saves the location of your plugins in LWEXT.cfg (inside config_sn) using UNC pathnames and not hardcoded ones.

However you MUST scan from 'Entire Network' down otherwise the pathnames are resolved to local hardcoded ones! (It does say that in the tutorial too!)

Then when the nodes are told to use the config files in:

\\YOUR_COMPUTER_NAME\ScreamerNet\config_sn
(if you shared your main LW folder as screamernet)

They will use the LWEXT.cfg file that has all the plugins stored with the UNC (network-aware) naming.

Hope that makes sense!

Matt

 

[lasco]

Shame on me Matt,
I missed that point…

Now I must say that yesterday I was really finding
strange I did not see it regarding the quality
of your tuto…
Just did not zoom at the screenshot on this
page 11 of the PDF !

Apologizes man, if I had look more accurately
this thread would not had even exist
(must say also I often miss points on manuals
due to the english language I don't speak perfectly)

thanx 1000 times for all this help.

 

[Matt]

No worries, glad you got it working!