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In high-end productions, it is often necessary to distribute a render job over a number of machines in a farm to quickly obtain all the frames needed for a sequence or to calculate a very large image. Maxwell Render’s networking capabilities are very powerful (more computers equals more speed in a very linear way), and very flexible - networking is multi-platform allowing a mixture of Windows, Mac and Linux systems to be connected together. The software’s wizard system makes setting a network job a straightforward task. With networking, you can tell Maxwell to render the same image on all your computers (cooperative rendering), or each computer can render one frame of an animation.

Introduction to network rendering

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You can choose to start the Manager, the Monitor or a Render Node on a computer by clicking on the appropriate shortcut (mx_manager, mx_node, mx_monitor). Please note that a computer that runs the Manager and/or the Monitor can also be used as a Render Node at the same time. The Maxwell network can render across a mixed network of computers running Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Only one instance of each type (Manager, Monitor or Node) can run in the same machine at the same time. Several Monitors however can run at the same time in the network, on different machines. This allows you to add jobs and control the network rendering from several different machines.

Command line

It is also possible to start the Manager, Monitor or any Render Node through the command line, using:

• mxnetwork -manager
• mxnetwork -monitor
• mxnetwork -nodeType in mxnetwork -help for more information about advanced command line flags to connect a Render Node or a Monitor

This is extremely useful in special cases, like if you want to connect your Monitor (or a Rendernode) to a specific Manager if

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you have more than one Manager in the same network

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Only one instance of each type (Manager, Monitor or Node) can run in the same machine at the same time. Several Monitors however can run at the same time in the network, on different machines. This allows you to add jobs and control the network rendering from several different machines., or if the Manager is in a different subnet. In that case you will have to launch that Monitor via command line, and indicate the IP of the Manager to be connected, in the way: 

mxnetwork.exe -monitor:xxx.xxx.x.xx       or  

mxnetwork.exe -monitor:[name] 

where xxx.xxx.x.xx and [name] are the IP or the name of the Manager, respectively. 

mxnetwork.exe - monitor:192.168.0.12

Using this flag, mxnetwork stablishes a TCP connection instead of using UDP broadcasting. 

The same must be applied to the desired Rendernode: 

mxnetwork.exe -node:xxx.xxx.x.xx   or 

mxnetwork.exe -node:[name]