Network rendering questions and ways to speed up rendering

[crc]

Hi, so I have checked through the forum, searched, and looked at the Indigo Ref. manual; but I'm still a little unsure of how the network rendering works.

Do I type the parameters into the "Run" dialogue box?
or ??? I don't know where to type the stuff, it looks a little like Unix. I'm not super familiar with this stuff on Windows.

Also, I am on a network at work, so the machines all go through the network server, don't I need to put in their IP addresses somewhere?
In the documentation, it only says to put in a port number. And, I'm guessing you start the master first, then the subsequent slaves?

I'm doing a number of renders now for a big project. I leave each going over night, generally for about 15hrs. They look good, but not as good as the one I left over the weekend-65hrs!!

Are there any other ways to speed up the rendering time?

Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

[PhilBo]

I put the indigo file (and the same version of indigo) on three PC's at home

1) My main system is named "supercomputer" in the network setup, you will need the name of yours

2) Click start, run, cmd

3) Navigate to the Indigo directory (Mine's at C:\indigo). Or you could install the Windows XP Powertoy CommandWindowHere. That allows you to right click on the Indigo Directory and open a command window there.

4) I typed "indigo default.xml -n m"

5) On the same machine, type "indigo default.xml -n s -h supercomputer:7777"

6) I typed it again (actually just hit F3 to re-enter the last command.) This will put a render pipe on each core. If you only have one core, obviously only type it once.

7) I then went to each computer and typed the line from 5) and the render was really cooking.

Hope that helps.

Phil

[crc]

That's the ticket!!!
It actually worked, the first time!
Thanks

[OnoSendai]

6) I typed it again (actually just hit F3 to re-enter the last command.) This will put a render pipe on each core. If you only have one core, obviously only type it once.

I recommend using multi-threading instead of running multiple slave processes per core. It's more memory efficient.
if u have n cores,
use
indigo -t n
which will start Indigo with n threads.

[zsouthboy]

For network rendering, which I use all the time, consider creating a few batch files and tossing them in your indigo shared directory.

for example:

indigoserver.bat:
START /LOW indigo.exe default.xml -t 2 -n m
START /LOW indigo.exe default.xml -t 2 -n s -h 127.0.0.1

indigoslave.bat:
START /LOW indigo.exe default.xml -t 2 -n s -h wee


Note that you must have the shared folder mapped as a drive (e.g. "Z") for this work - universal resource location won't work (that means, if you run the script from //wee/sharedocs/, it won't work)

In my examples, replace "-t 2" with however many cores you wish to render on. replace "wee" with either the internal IP of the server box, or the name of it.

[crc]

6) I typed it again (actually just hit F3 to re-enter the last command.) This will put a render pipe on each core. If you only have one core, obviously only type it once.

I recommend using multi-threading instead of running multiple slave processes per core. It's more memory efficient.
if u have n cores,
use
indigo -t n
which will start Indigo with n threads.

In the "Render Settings" dialogue box, there is a "Number of Threads" option; either 1 or 2. I'm guessing this does the same as what you say above?

[Whaat]

Yes, this is the same. If you have more than 2 cores, you can modify the Sketchup plugin to use additional threads. I describe how to do this in another Sketchup forum.
http://www2.indigorenderer.com/joomla/f ... php?t=1342