Re: Distributed Rendering 2003-12-01 - By pmiinalainen
Back
Yes, it has been discussed. If i remember correctly, it will maybe
happen some day... Nothing certain, but some hints towards that. So,
don't hold your breath.
Full distributed rendering would require eovia to do it as there are
no means to distribute rendering of single image between multiple
computers. However, if you want to do distribute rendering of
animation among multiple computers, that is possible. But it is not
automated. With little effort, it can be also automated and i am
looking into it. It will propably be windows only for many, many
reasons...
The suggested solution means that you have to have carrara installed
on several computers. So, if you don't have license for that many
seats, you are breaking the licensing rules.
Anyway, here's what to do.
1.In your network, share a directory or hard drive on one computer
and map it as a virtual/ network drive. Map it on all computers by
using the same drive letter, for example R (for rendering).
2. In the scene to be rendered, adjust the settings and save the
rendering as batch que job by following the next example. For
example you are rendering an animation with 10 000 frames total. You
have 5 computers on your network. You want to use 4 of them for
rendering and keep working on one. So, you divide the the 10 000 by
4 and enter frames 0....2500 range to be rendered, set output as
sequenced still images and use your preferred format. Set the output
of the images into folder at your virtual R-drive. For example,
R:\MyBlockbusterMovie\rendering\movie00000.jpg.
3. Save these settings as R:\MyBlockbusterMovie\render1.btq
4. Now adjust the frame range to 2501...5000 and save the job as
render2.btq. Do the same for last two sequences.
5. Go into each of the four computers (1...4), browse to
R:\MyBlockbusterMovie\ and double-click on one of the
render1.btq ...render4.btq files.
When double clicked, windows opens the btq file in registered
application which is carrara. Carrara 3 supports .btq as opening
parameter and starts to render the defined job. If you have been
careful and saved all the models and textures on shared R-drive,
each instance of carrara should be able to find all references to
external files. And by saving as sequenced still images, each of the
computers can start outputting the frames into same directory, one
by one. What you'll see, is that coumputer 1 will be saving frames
starting from movie00001.jpg, computer2 from movie02500.jpg,
computer3 from movie05000.jpg and computer4 from movie7500.jpg. They
will do this totally independent from each other. You can of course
create 4 avi or qt files as well, but i wouldn't recommend that...
Now you just have to open the sequences in you video editing app and
edit, effect and save them as avi, qt, rm or whatever.
If you want to automate this, search a program called smedge. Make a
small script or executable file that will search for certain text
inside btq file and divide the frame range with the number of
available computers and passes the jobs to smedge for automatic
distribution. Smedge supports external programs and has also some
internal scripting features. If this is too difficult for you to do,
you just have to wait until eovia releases official support for
distributed rendering. Or that i will find time to finish the helper
app for smedge so that it will work in general installations.
petteri
--- In Carrara@(protected), "sonflare" <sonflare@(protected)> wrote:
> Hi all,
> Has anyone broached the subject of a Stand Alone Renderer for
> Carrara? I would say the main issue for Carrara being used in
larger
> scale productions is rendering time and production pipelines. A
> distributed rendering engine would go a long way to getting use in
> bigger companies I'd say.
> Even as a single user it would help imensely to have a second
machine
> (s) for rendering. More grunt but cheaper graphics etc.
>
> Cheers,
> Sonflare
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