If you are working in Windows and want to run more than twenty Render Nodes simultaneously, all the folders need to be set up on a machine that is running Windows Server because any other version of Windows will only allow twenty (ten in versions older than Windows 7) simultaneous connections at any given time. Make sure you always check the “Send Dependencies” option. If you are in Linux or Mac this problem does not exist.
When rendering animations, make sure that you have plenty of free hard drive space. Each MXI file can easily be 100+ MB in size, especially if Multilight is enabled, and will quickly fill up a small drive.
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If you are having problems detecting the nodes in your network, disable your firewall.
The "Golden Rule" on networking
In order to ensure everything will be sent and stored correctly, we suggest to keep in mind the "Golden rule" on networking: The source files (the scene project) must be fully accessible for the MONITOR (ideally it is better if the project folder were located in the Monitor computer), while the output folder (where you want the final renders to be stored) must be fully accessible for the MANAGER (ideally it is better if the output folder were located in the Manager computer).
In fact, the most robust configuration is having the Manager and Monitor being the same computer. The Network obviously can work perfectly under any other configuration, but working this way you skip the possibility of access and path issues.
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- Make sure to have a normal user account (not root);
- Get Maxwell installed and licensed; the license can be a file called maxwell_license.lic which only contains a single line of text following this example: HOST <name or IP address of the rlm computer> ANY 5053. This file can be edited manually and copied from one node to the other as its only purpose is letting Maxwell know where the RLM is with the true licenses; It’s located in /home/<username>/Maxwell.
- The working directory of the node by default is: /tmp/ and the node automatically creates mxnetwork/<node computer name>/ subfolders; you should make sure that a normal user is capable of reading and writing from / to that folder;
- In the case you want to customize the working path and the default logs path, Maxwell uses the mxnetworkprefs_v4.ini file. If the render node is opened normally with interface, it will create a preferences file after closing it, but if you are using it through command line you'll have to add it manually if you want to customize the place where maxwell stores the render information and logs (this is optional; it's not strictly required). You can add that preferences file for mxnetwork in this folder: /home/<username>/Maxwell/ called mxnetworkprefs_v4.ini in which you can customize the working path (tempPath) and the default log path (defaultLogsPath) among other things. You can start with this sample file, but please, make sure to set both paths correctly; pay special attention to the computer name at the tempPath item and the username at the defaultLogsPath item and that the user which will run mxnetwork has read/write access to those paths.
- You can then run the render node from the Maxwell installation folder making sure to run it as a normal user and not as root. The node runs by typing this command: mxnetwork -node ; you can add the IP of the manager after node flag to force the node to connect to a particular manager; it would look like this: mxnetwork -node:192.168.0.66 and you can add -nogui flag in order to run it only through command line.
- In order to avoid problems with the output folder path, it would be better to run the manager on a Windows computer (if the output folder belongs to a Windows one), as the manager is in charge of collecting the files generated by the nodes, combining them and writing the final output.
- When launching the job, it is recommended to activate “Send dependencies” option and if there’s a queue of jobs, do not close the monitor until all the jobs are sent.
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