Lincoln Brown

There is an easy way! For shutdown, I have a simple batch file on my workstation's desktop. a double click shuts down 11 servers. shutdown /s /f /m \\10.1.10.29 shutdown /s /f /m \\10.1.10.30 shutdown /s /f /m \\10.1.10.31 pause i add the pause so the command window stays up and I can see if any didn't respond, but it isn't necessary add a line for each computer and save it as "shutdown.bat" for booting, I use a simple WOL program: http://www.profshutdown.com/download.aspx just select which computers you want on and click the wake up button

The problem does seem to lie with the drives, but since they are new, I just set them up in a raid array, they can't be needing defragmentation. I do have nearly all my projects of the past few years on there, maybe its time to move some off. The array is 300gb and is filled with 200gb (47,000 files) of projects and another 10gb (14,000 files) of bitmaps and such. I made it a "dynamic" drive, with a 250gb volume (projects) and a 50gb volume (maps). Could this be an issue? its hardware raid so really there was no need to make it dynamic. Everything WinXp Pro... will explore linux someday when there's "time". ha ha!

hi there. i've got two big deadlines converging along with some recent hardware changes, and the result is not pretty. having tried everything within my limited networking knowledge, I hope someone out there might have some better ideas! first, the setup: i have a speedy dual xeon workstation where i work, and set it to render when i'm not. then there are 5 p4 render nodes, each with 1-2gb of ram. finally, and this is my recent addition, i have a dedicated file server where all project files are located on a raid 10 drive setup. a separate non-raid drive collects the output. the network is gigabit, and its a simple xp peer-peer. and here's the problem: as i am working on files in max, autocad, or photoshop, occasionally the software will hang, typically when going to save. when this happens the workstation and all the render nodes lose connection to the server (i'm using mapped drives now, though was using all UNC in max with the same problem). i need to restart the server to get the connection back. there are plenty of spontaneous failures amongst the nodes as well, where they get TIFFOpen failures. i presume the problem lies with the server... but i'm at a loss what to do. its an HP Proliant ML150 SATA, and i know this is not "supposed" to run xp, and maybe thats the problem??? the nic drivers are for win2003 i think, but they seem to work fine for the most part. or is it just too much to ask a peer to peer network to be rendering on 5-6 machines? thanks in advance!

i'm using the scanline, and not animating them. i'd been trying with vray but since i'm new to vray animation, gave up because that just compounded my problems. rendering, once i can get there, is actually working ok. working with the file is the big problem. i tried converting one tree to an editable mesh but the file got hung up (this is a max file with only the trees) so no luck there. i am managing to get the renders going, so long as i xref the trees at the very last second (they are excluded from radiosity anyway). saving/loading the 16mb file takes forever, edits occasionally crash it. arghhhh! i'm missing halloween parties over this... it seems as though i'll get the project done, but i'd like to use bionatics for future snowy projects without wasting away the weekend!

i've been pulling my hair out for the past 24 hours trying to get an animation rendering. bionatics trees are the culprit, and this being a winter scene, there's nothing else i can use. the model has about 40 trees, all set to Hybrid mode. not a lot faces! and yet these trees manage to eat up 1GB of memory just sitting there, not even rendering. I am constantly getting out of memory errors (i have 4gb with /3gb switch set). The rest of the model is not all that big, i've worked with far larger w/o problems. my system has plenty of juice, dual xeon & 4gb. using max8. when i did manage to get the model out to backburner to render some frames there were no memory issues (and some of my nodes only have 1GB). however, the trees rendered black, so I'm trying to assess why and now can't even get the tree file to open. any ideas what could be causing this??? does anyone have advice for how to efficiently work with bionatics trees?

hi, i could use some critique on these images, especially the nighttime... its my first night render, and i'm kind of at a loss how to improve it. in the night shot i'd like to add action on the road, with blurred moving cars... anyone have suggestions how to achieve this in 2d or 3d? thanks! link

yeah, those are some of the splotches i was referring to. i've spent a lot of time trying to eliminate them... no luck yet!!!

I'm having some lighting issues here... those black splotches. caused (so it seems) by the projector lights i'm using for the tree shadows. any ideas what could be doing this? viz05/scanline/radiosity other than that i'm almost done so would love to get some feedback. link

almost done... final comments from the client: too grayish, especially ceiling and walls. anyone have tricks for whitening up a ceiling w/o making it look fake? i actually lightened this in photoshop but it still looks muddy on the computer screen. looking at the white ceiling in my office, it is indeed gray relative to other surfaces. i've tried adding uplights and giving the ceiling some self-illumination, but then it becomes very flat. link

thats kind of frightening what u left me in the sink. i'll submit it to the client just like that! i work on a laptop and check the images regularly on a CRT, they are always completely different! very frustrating. much more saturated on the crt, so i tend to wash things out a bit more. thanks guys for your suggestions any opinions on "clutter"? more, less, just leave it alone? the client wants some candles to romance it up a bit...

Hi all, I've been learning a lot from this forum, but now I'm in need of some direct feedback. This is my first hi-quality interior rendering (i've done mostly animations). using Viz 2005, scanline, radiosity w/regather The #1 priority of the image is to emphasize the view, so I could use some advice on how to improve that. Unfortunately this is the best photo I could get as its been raining quite a bit the past few days! Deadline is tomorrow but I welcome feedback beyond that. Thanks! link