Indigo has built-in support for network rendering, which allows all the computers on a network to work together to render a single Indigo scene more rapidly.
You will need one master computer, that will coordinate the rendering process. Please note that it is not possible to start or coordinate the rendering process from a slave computer (registered with a node licence).
You will also need one or more slave computers, that will be helping to render the scene. For the purposes of this tutorial, the slave computers must be on the same local area network (LAN), and able to communicate with each other.
On the Master computer
- Launch the Indigo application.
- Open the scene that you want to render in the Indigo Renderer GUI using the "Open Scene" button.
- Press the "Network Rendering" button to enable network rendering mode.
- Press the start render button.
On the Slave computer
- Run the Indigo Network Render Slave.
The network slave can be launched by the shortcut (Windows), the Indigo Networks Slave app (OSX), or by running indigo or indigo_console executables with the command line switch "-n s":./indigo -n s
If the network slave can find the master and connect to it on the network, it will then download the scene from the master and start rendering it.
Viewing connected slaves on the master GUI
You can view all network slaves that are helping with the current render by selecting "Network Rendering" from the combo box on the right hand edge of the Master GUI.