Net Render?

[DAN212222]

hi guys ive created a 600 frame animation, at university and am trying to render it on a g4 mac, not having much look to say the least, i left it over night and it wasnt even 25% done, im heading back to uni now, to try it again as my deadline was yesterday but the lecturers have gave me an extension due to a number of problems including university equipment, ive spoke to the technicians and they are not sure of how to set up c4d to render from a number of machines, anyone know how to do or know of any tutorials? any infor would be great

 

cheers dan

[Ernest Burden III]

It's covered in the manual. Actually, I think its best covered in the thin tutorial manual.

 

But in short--you run the C4Dserver.exe app on one machine, and the C4Dclient on the other networked machines that should be used. All client machines need your full MAXON folder present, though they will not start Cinema directly. You don't need sample files, etc.

 

You must find out the IP address of the machine running the server and enter it into each client app. You usually use port 8080 for the server, so its IP xxx.xxx.x.x:8080 You type that IP address into a web browser to launch the NetRender app (after you've started the server and clients) and it has a table for setting up jobs, which consists of selecting and 'uploading' all the files you will need. It sets up a folder somewhere burried under 'user' I think in the Maxon folder, where you can manually copy files (if you have lots of textures for example). If you miss one texture the render process will stop, so get 'em all. Finally, you start the rendering, then click 'clients' to watch the frames get divided up and rendered. The results will be in a folder called 'results'.

 

But you don't have enough time to get all that working, obviously. What to do?

 

Is Cinema installed on more than one machine (under whatever licence the school has)? If so, copy your project to all available machines, open the drawing file and set the render range 0-199 on the first, 200-399 on the second, etc. according to how many machine you can get your hands on and render that way. My licence allows only one C4D install, but unlimited rendering across a network. But I would bet your school has multiple C4D licences so use that if you can. Not only will it be faster, you can actually see what is going on with each machine--NetRender gives zero feedback.

 

God luck..

[STRAT]

copy your project to all available machines, open the drawing file and set the render range 0-199 on the first, 200-399 on the second, etc. according to how many machine you can get your hands on and render that way. My licence allows only one C4D install, but unlimited rendering across a network. But I would bet your school has multiple C4D licences so use that if you can. Not only will it be faster, you can actually see what is going on with each machine--NetRender gives zero feedback.

 

 

thats exactly my prefered method.

[pauldoherty]

Is there a way of spliting up still shots

across several machines also?

[Ernest Burden III]

Is there a way of spliting up still shots

across several machines also?

 

Not really. v9 and up has two special cameras listed in the 'objects' menu, the 9 tile and the 25 tile camera. They will cut up an image into a 3x3 or 5x5 grid and render each as a frame of animation (9 frames or 25 frames) but the results must be hand assembled later and with GI may show slight seams. So technically this could be done over a NetRender setup, but its not very practical. But desperation drives us to do the impractical.

 

Other than that, using FinalRender2 with C4D will allow bucket rendering of a single image.

[STRAT]

or a method i commonly use is the letterbox method. extremely easy to use and setup.

 

for instance, basically involves blanking off the bottom half of your model on one machine, and blanking off the top half on another, and rendering it that way. 2 machines simultaneously rendering 1 still.

[Ernest Burden III]

the letterbox method

 

Ah! Thanks for the reminder! I've used that for changes to a picture, where I need a little 'patch'.

[STRAT]

yup, create a faced grid directly in front of the camera and erase the squares you want to render through to.

 

c4d must be one of the only 3d rendering apps i know that wont allow you to render a region to file.

[Frosty]

Not really. v9 and up has two special cameras listed in the 'objects' menu, the 9 tile and the 25 tile camera. They will cut up an image into a 3x3 or 5x5 grid and render each as a frame of animation (9 frames or 25 frames) but the results must be hand assembled later and with GI may show slight seams. So technically this could be done over a NetRender setup, but its not very practical. But desperation drives us to do the impractical.

Other than that, using FinalRender2 with C4D will allow bucket rendering of a single image.

 

I've used the tiling cameras MANY times. If you dont use GI its a god send on high res high poly files. If you wish to use GI, all CPUs must match or the GI seed will be different and you'll get mismatched lighting as Ernest stated. I found that the tiling camera makes the render a bit faster even on one machine.

 

I did write a tutorial a while back on how to use these cameras effectively.

http://www.crucialperception.com/free/tutorials/image-tiling.pdf