Max 9 question

[Devin Johnston]

I've got my copy of Max 9 which comes with both 32 & 64 bit versions, so I have to decide which one to install. Most of my machines are still running Windows XP with only a handful running XP64. My question is can a render farm operate on both versions or do I have to go with just one?

[imgumbydammit]

Not sure myself as I haven't tried it but from what I've read you can't mix 32 and 64 bit machines in a render farm with max...

HTH

 

IGD

[AJLynn]

The only way I've tried farming is with mental ray's Raysat system, and that does not work cross-platform. It actually installs different version with different service names. What I ended up doing was installing 32 and 64 on the XP64 box and 32 on the XP32 box, and I use Max9-32 when initiating Raysat jobs.

[Devin Johnston]

Ok let's say I have 100 32 bit render nodes and then I have my work station which is 64 bit. Can I install the 64 bit version on my work station and then use the 32 bit render nodes to render out my scenes?

[AJLynn]

I guess it would depend on the specifics of the distributing system you're using, but the worst case scenario is you need to also install 32-bit Max9 on the Win64 box (it allows that with one license) and use that for render farming.

[Justin Hunt]

yes it will work, so long as the 32bit machines can handle the scenes. There is a danger of rendering differences in a mixed farm though. Due to the accuracy differences of floating point calculations, some things will render differently.

 

I did come across a thread somewhere explaining some if the issues, I'll have to dig it out though

 

JHV

[John Dollus]

http://discussion.autodesk.com/adskcsp/thread.jspa?threadID=518229

[Justin Hunt]

beat me to it

 

JHV

[Devin Johnston]

That's a good post; so from what I understand you can install both 32 & 64 bit versions on a render node and send out a job and back burner will identify which render nodes should be used for which job, that's pretty slick.