Cooperative Rendering Help

[mugsiusmagnus]

I've been somewhat successful in my efforts to test Maxwell's cooperative rendering capability with only one exception. Maxer et all, writing in this forum, report that each node (Maxwell's "server") generates its own mxi file and that one must then manually combine each node-specific mxi file to view and save the multi-node render.

 

I have yet to successfully create an inidividual mxi file for each node. Everytime I attempt to do so I can only create one mxi file.

 

My command line options are as follows

 

a) -o:w:\maxwell\networkcopy.jpg -res:1024x768 -t:20 -mxi:w:\maxwell\networkcopy.mxi

 

b) -o:d:\maxwell\localcopy.jpg -res:1024x768 -t:20 -mxi:d:\maxwell\localcopy.mxi

 

Drive w: is a network drive and drive d: is a local drive.

 

In case a) one jpg and one mxi file is created on the w: drive. (Maxwell does give the message that it is merging mxi files, so it initially seemed that this might be the magically merged file, though I found that hard to believe considering these forums report that that feature does not work.)

 

In case b) an individual jpg is created on each node but only one node (the first server started, evidently) contains an mxi file on the local drive.

 

I've only experimented with 20 minute renders, but in my experimentation it appears that one 20 minute render on 3 nodes produces a slightly less noisy render than the same scene rendered on 1 individual machine. I'm going to do a much larger test on a much more detailed model this evening but will gladly welcome any advice anyone might want to give.

[Devin Johnston]

In case a) one jpg and one mxi file is created on the w: drive. (Maxwell does give the message that it is merging mxi files, so it initially seemed that this might be the magically merged file, though I found that hard to believe considering these forums report that that feature does not work.)

 

Believe it or not the cooperative merge feature does actually work if your network is setup properly giving the folder where all the files are being saved to as well as all the render nodes the permissions they need to read and write files.

 

To test to see if the MXI is being created on the network drive is actually a combined MXI and not just a single MXI from one of the nodes try this:

-go to each nodes Maxwell Folder and fine the cooperative.mxi file

-copy each one of these files into a new folder, you will need to rename them since you can't save multiple copies of the same file in the same folder

-manually combine them together using the cooperative function in the Maxwell viewer

 

Now compare the manually combined file to the one that was saved on the network drive. If there is no difference then you will know it's working, I would also just turn one of the MXI's into a jpeg so you will know what an image from a single machine will look like.

 

I've only experimented with 20 minute renders, but in my experimentation it appears that one 20 minute render on 3 nodes produces a slightly less noisy render than the same scene rendered on 1 individual machine. I'm going to do a much larger test on a much more detailed model this evening but will gladly welcome any advice anyone might want to give.

 

Images that have low SL numbers won't show much improvement when combined, it doesn’t really become noticeable until you let it reach SL levels higher than 10.