Network rendering
From FIRSTwiki
Note: This article is written assuming that the rendering is taking place on a network of Windows 2000 computers with restricted user privileges, and that the user has a network drive with a large storage capacity available.
Network rendering is the process of getting multiple computers to render the individual frames of an animation in order to decrease the amount of time needed before the animation is complete. The animation for the Autodesk Visualization Competition is limited to being thirty seconds long. 30 seconds of animation at about 30 frames per second is 900 rendered frames. In some cases, one frame rendered relatively photo realistically can take two hours to render. If one computer were to render a 900 frame animation, taking two hours to render each frame, it would take seventy-five days to render. By using a lab of twenty computers, it would take less than four days. This makes it possible to complete an animation during the period of the competition, and be able to render it at nights when the computer lab is not being used for teaching.
In order to network render, a team must have access to a group of computers on a network. This is the first step, find a group of relatively fast computers on the same network (preferably in the same room, but it isn’t required) that won't be needed overnight at any time during the competition. Each computer must have a copy of 3D Studio Max on it for the rendering to work. In the case of this competition, if a school doesn't have a lab of computers with 3DS Max on it that can be used by a team, an alternative is to install an unregistered trial version of 3DS Max onto each computer; this will work for 30 days before 3DS Max requires registration.
3D Studio Max comes with its own network rendering software, Backburner 2. There are three different parts to Backburner: servers, the manager, and the monitor. The manager runs the show, it tells the servers which frame of the animation they are to render. The manager computer is the computer that has 3DS open with the animation on it. The servers are all of the other computers, and even the manager computer can run a server at the same time. The monitor is just a program that allows the user to interface with the manager.
Before rendering can occur, a team must have at least one scene completed from their animation. All of the texture images that were used in the animation must be copied to one folder on a network drive (the servers won't be able to find the textures on the local hard drive of another computer) In other words, go through all of the texture files and change them from something like "C:\myfiles\tex1.jpg" to something like "\\NetworkUserName\sharedtexturefolder\tex1.jpg". Activate the manager on the computer with the animation file open. Activate a server on each computer that will be used to render. Open the monitor on the manager computer, and check that all of the servers have connected. In 3DS, in the rendering window, set the output location to a folder in the network drive, and output as some type of picture file format (AVIs will not work, tiffs are a good option). Then, select 'network render', and hit the render button.
A new box will appear, click 'connect'. Set the alternate texture path to the folder that was created on the network drive. Then start the rendering.
The monitor should show each server computer starting to render.
The manager computer will save each frame to the network drive, attaching a number to the end. The frames will be numbered in order; in a thirty second animation they will be numbered from 000 to 899.
The final step is combine all of the still images into a video file. This can be done with many programs, including Adobe Premiere or tools built into 3DS Max. Adobe Premiere is the most powerful option if your team has a copy, but otherwise you need to use the tools in 3DS Max.
In 3DS Max, the best tool to use to composite the images is video post. The correct process for using this is detailed in the 3DS Max User Reference under the topic 'Useful Video Post Procedures'.
It is also possible, though it requires a single file sequence, to do this in the RAM player. This way is not documented in the 3DS Max help files or tutorials, and it may cause your computer to slow down or freeze if you do not have enough RAM. Open the RAM player (Rendering->Ram Player), and open the sequence of images by selecting the first image in the sequence, and checking the ‘sequence’ box. After all of the images are loaded, play the file to make sure it is correct, and output as .mov (note that file format requirements may change year to year - please see the FIRST webpage for current rules)
