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General info

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  • Make sure that all the machines in the network have the same version of Maxwell Render installed. Many transference problems in the network are caused by having different Maxwell Render versions all over the network. Updating to the last version on all machines will
    ensure the best communication between nodes.

  • Make sure that all the nodes have the same network card or cards with similar transfer capabilities. This will ensure a good transfer speed between all nodes. We recommend gigabit network.

  • Keep your network as homogeneous as possible. Similar computing powers and transference ratios will make the communication between all the machines much easier.

  • Remember to turn off your firewall if you are getting issues detecting nodes in the network.
  • DO NOT set the temp files folder for Manager/Nodes/Monitor to point to the same networked folder as this will have two very negative consequences:
    • each node will write their MXI files to the same folder - overwriting each others contribution to the render process
    • for each SL increment, all the nodes are writing to this network folder causing much slower write speeds than writing to a local folder, which will also result in a slower render.

You should always set local temp folders. Or you can leave the settings at default in which case the temp files will be saved in the systems temp folder. The temp folder location can be customized from File>Preferences (in Manager/Monitor and each Node).

 

OSX

3. File path problems when submitting a job

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Excerpt

For multi-platform compatibility reasons, all the network paths in Maxwell Render are in UNC format by default. Mac OSX cannot handle UNC paths natively and so some transformations are needed. These transformations cannot always be done automatically, so keep the following tips in mind to make network rendering much easier when using Mac OSX. 

  • Checking the “send dependencies” option will be faster and more reliable in most cases.

  • In a multi-platform environment, it’s preferable to use Mac OSX machines only as render nodes.

  • When launching the render from a Mac OSX machine (and if the Manager is not in the same machine as the Monitor), the output path must be understandable and accessible from the Manager machine. 

  • If the Manager is running on a Mac OSX machine, selecting a local path will save the file in the same local path (if it exists) as where the Manager is running. Using the "Retry" button of the local path warning dialog will convert this local path to a network path. This means the files will be saved in the referring path, but the selected local path must still be located in your user folder (or in any of its subfolders) or in any secondary drive. 

  • If the Manager is running on a Windows machine, you must specify a network UNC path to the MXS file, or a Windows shared folder must be selected in the dialog, which all nodes must have direct access to. If you are saving the MXI/Image output on the same computer that the Manager is running on, you can specify the MXI/Image output paths as local paths. Otherwise, if the output is ment to be saved to a different networked computer, use UNC paths for the output paths. The Manager must have access to this networked path/folder in order to save the final output. If it doesn't, the Manager log window will output a warning that it couldn't save the files to that location, and you can instead find the output in a local path specified in the Manager log window.

  • When "Send Dependencies" is not selected, you must specify a UNC path to the folder where the scene dependencies (textures, IOR, HDR, IES etc. files) are located, which all nodes must have access to. A second option would be that when you create your scenes and load textures for materials, specify HDR maps for environment lighting etc. that you load these files from a networked folder using UNC paths. So all the dependencies paths for all scene assets would already have UNC paths, in which case you don't have to specify a networked folder for these assets in the Add job wizard.

TIP: To quickly gather all the scenes dependencies into one folder, you can use the Pack & Go feature found in Maxwell Studio, and also many of the plugins. In case of Studio, simply open the MXS file, go to File>Pack & Go, and choose a folder where all the files will be copied, including the MXS file. It works in the exact same way in the plugins, please read the plugins documentation to see where this feature is located.

4. Launching a network render in a mixed (PC/ Mac) network fails

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