Network Rendering Setup

[Foogoofish]

Hi All!

First, thank you for helping me with this issue. I have been banging my head against a wall for the last few days at work as I can not get this to happen. I am really keen on making it work as our architects are crying for faster renders and this seems like the best way to make it happen.

My setup is:
PC1 with Network Manager and Working Renderer
PC2 with Network Slave

There are a few issues I have run into. Very often, the network slave will come up with a write error. I can not remember the exact name, but it basically stops there, and nothing will happen past that point.

The next is on the infrequent chance it does not get a write error, it will not connect to the network master, and just sits there idling, even though all computers are on the same work group / should be able to see each other. The network slave just starts up and does not print any more text in the box.

Only once has the network slave done some work (one in a hundred at least!), and then it did about 15 seconds, and then dropped the connection and did not reconnect.

I have been doing a lot of network stuff for a while with servers and LAN's, but have not run into this sort of thing before. As the results are so varied, I am not sure what is happening and how to address the issue. If it is really important, I can get the exact name of the write error on Thursday.

Thanks very much for reading, and I look forward to trying the product out and getting it sorted!

[OnoSendai]

Hi,
There was a network bug that was fixed in the 3.2 series of betas. Please try upgrading to the latest Indigo (3.2.8 ): http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... =1&t=11448

[Foogoofish]

Fantastic quick response. Many thanks.

Will get on it, and if there are still issues then I will post back when I am at work on Thursdays.

Cheers!

[Foogoofish]

Because I am 'boring' and have no one at home tonight, I decided to try the Indigo version you recommended for Mac (have Mac Mini as a server and my laptop), even though work is all Windows (at the moment anyway...!). Success! It all worked very well once I had tinkered around a bit. I came into some interesting results though that I had not considered from the setup manual given here:

http://www.indigorenderer.com/wiki/network-rendering

Basically, the Slave (Mini Server) could only connect to the Network Manager / Master (Laptop) when File Sharing was enabled for the entire hard drive of the Network Manager / Master. I had not considered this necessary from reading the part of the guide below, but sure enough after a couple of tests it seems this is the only way to get it to connect. Am I being an idiot and is this implied?

Providing the network slave can find the master and connect to it on the network, it should then download the scene from the master and start rendering it

I guess I am putting this here as it is still in Beta, and I figure you guys either didn't get to that part yet, or you know and the manual hasn't been updated. Either way.....is there a better way to do it I am missing? Firewalls are all off by the way.

So:

Will I have to do the same and share all work computer hard drives in XP / Win 7? If so, is there a way I can share a specific folder that will make it work? This is because we have a fairly wide array of home laptops being used in work (as well as the towers) that are all going to be part of this, so I figure people don't want their holiday snaps being publicly accessible! Fingers crossed that I only need to share the master.

Regards and many, many thanks,

Foogoo