Devin Johnston Posted May 28, 2008 Share Posted May 28, 2008 I don't know how many of you work in an office and how far you have to drive to get there but my daily commute is about 50 miles round trip. With the cost of gas climbing every day I'm starting to look at alternatives, besides buying a new car that gets better gas mileage I've been thinking about telecommuting. The benefits are obvious, the more days I can work at home the less I pay in gas and the hour and 30 minutes I spend in traffic every day can be spent at home with the family. There are several things to consider the most important is can I effectively work from home using a DSL connection to remote login to my work computer? I do this all the time to check on jobs that are in backburner, or to submit jobs for rendering and even to do a little work on images that I didn't have time to get to at work. The problem is the lag time in display refresh I get using this type of connection; it would be much slower than actually sitting at the computer. I don’t know if there is a better software application than remote desktop that would give better display and refresh performance, if there is it’s worth taking a look at. If not then I’d be faced with carrying my 40LB computer to and from work which wouldn’t really work because all of my distributed rendering nodes would still be here as well as all the material and model libraries. I hope that some of you are doing this already and can give me some tips or ideas on the best way to make this work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted May 28, 2008 Share Posted May 28, 2008 I don't think updating the screen via remote access is the way to go. However, if you keep a window open to it, a drive mapped remotely to it or to the same drive mappings as your work computer, then when you render, either submit it via the work computer to the render node or try to get the render network to work via the remote drive mappings. Another way to do it would be a WAN - Wide Area Network - where work would set up a special server, you guys connect thru it, and it's just like you're at the office. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 Really I think the main drawback you'll face is the DSL connection. I've got a terribly slow computer at home, but a cable internet connection, so connecting to the office isn't an issue if I need to check the status of jobs or whatever. I wouldn't try to do it over DSL though. If it helps, the App I use (which someone here recommended) is from www.logmein.com they have a free program that is VERY cool, and allows you to login to your computer from any other computer in the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 Personally I would invest in a decent laptop and get your licenses portable. When I'm on the road I work on my macbook attached to a 500gb external HD and a USB hub with my dongle's for vray and archicad. Add autodesk's PLU for moving around the max license between your work computer and laptop and you're ready to go. I do work at home now and then with that setup, but I normally don't do any major work. Most of the time it's trouble shooting other peoples scenes, modeling, and scene setup or if it's any rendering, I'm mostly doing render regions to check materials after doing small tests with the rendering settings cranked back. A dualcore can get it done. I have a dualcore desktop at home that I'll sometimes DR through for 4 cores. If I need to start a full-res render I upload the scene back to the office through the VPN, use window's remote desktop to access my computer and fire it off on the renderfarm back at the office. Cisco VPN is solid, I'm sure there's other available routes for VPN. You could probably form that into a workable scenario for working from home. One thing I would definitely check into is getting a GoToMeeting account. I do half my work for other offices and that program is clutch for reviewing work and discussing renders/markups remotely. Emailing files and trying to discuss things on the phone is okay, but it's alot easier when you can pass back and forth control of a shared screen and point directly at things so you are sure what each other is talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 29, 2008 Author Share Posted May 29, 2008 It sounds like a WAN and a GoToMeeting account are my best choices to make this work. Thanks for the advice! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 As someone who has telecommuted for the past 5 years, both as a production artist and as someone in management, I can tell you without question no remote desktop, LogMeIn or GoToMeeting is going to give you enough capability to work effectively. Specifically working within the Max interface to do anything other than perhaps press render or set up a job etc. Especially given you will need to connect via a VPN. (see below) You'll either need another workstation for home or a laptop (desktop replacement). You'd work on files locally and render test renders locally, but production renders would be sent back to your farm in the office. As far as file access. I'm not sure what your company security policies are, but you would not want to set up a WAN using a public internet lines without implementing a VPN site to site connection to ensure the security of both of your local networks and files. The problem however is that VPNs must encrypt/decrypt the data on each end, so it slows down transfer speed CONSIDERABLY. Trust me, from experience you will go nuts trying to do this as it's easily 10-20 times slower than accssing a local network. My suggestion would be to have a local mirror of all of your files from work and then sync the two (home and office) at night. This of course does not help you when you just created 5GB of files and now need to push it all to the farm at 2am. You'll have to wait for all of the files to transfer or go to the office and upload them manually. Something I never had the luxury of doing as the office was 1000's of miles away or overseas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 29, 2008 Author Share Posted May 29, 2008 Oh that's what I was afraid of. The problem is that I use distributed rendering all the time just to do tests; I'd either have to take a rack server's worth of hardware home with me or get a couple of those 16 core machines from Boxx. It's not looking good for telecommuting; I might have to get an electric car it would probably cost less than the two Boxx machines Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 Oh that's what I was afraid of. The problem is that I use distributed rendering all the time just to do tests; I'd either have to take a rack server's worth of hardware home with me or get a couple of those 16 core machines from Boxx. It's not looking good for telecommuting; I might have to get an electric car it would probably cost less than the two Boxx machines You might want to run a test, I'm not sure how much traffic actually passes back and forth from the GUI box and the distributed machines. It might be ok. Copying large files back and forth is problematic though and you would not want to open a file from the work network and work on it, as it's very slow, especially if there are auto-saves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 It's not looking good for telecommuting; I might have to get an electric car it would probably cost less than the two Boxx machines I do have to laugh about the price of gas in the US and how everyone is freaking out. In Canada, we've been paying more than you are paying now for a few years. As my Murrano only takes premium it costs $130 to fill it from bone dry these days. I'm paying over $5 a gallon to fill my car and in Europe they pay a lot more than that in places. All what you get used to I guess. Curiously where I live in Canada, we supply 20% of the US crude oil...how does that work... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 29, 2008 Author Share Posted May 29, 2008 The problem is you guy's have been paying higher prices for a long time, we've seen a 400% increase within the last year or two. Places like Houston are so spread out that it's imposable to get anywhere unless you drive 10 or 20 miles. Public transportation is a joke unless you want to spend hours on the bus to get somewhere that would take 30 minutes in a car. My wife and I both have cars that get about 18 MPG, between the two of us we're spending about $500 a month just in gas. Buying a hybrid would help but is it worth spending $25,000 or $30,000 to save 2 or 3 thousand a year? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitetr Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 yeah, but here in the US OVERALL, we've only seen single digit increase in the price of gasoline over the past 30 years (figuring in inflation). It's not bad in the overall scheme of things. So, even living here in the US and dealing with the price of gas, I tend to agree with Jeff. By the way, I "hypermile" in my daily driver...yeah, it does help. ...and now back to you regularly schedule topic... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dean@pikcells Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 what are you driving to get 18 MPG ?! i know American cars are known for their appetite for fuel, but even performance cars over here would get 18 MPG. i think the new honda gets around 80 mpg. anyway, back on topic..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 29, 2008 Author Share Posted May 29, 2008 Jeep Liberty, I like it but when I bought it gas was about $1.50 per gallon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 My 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee gets between 13 and 15 MPG on my daily 56 mi commute. Of course, it's full time 4x4 with a 5.2L V8, so I can't complain too much - it's my own fault.... Anyway, what works very well for me is to work off of a portable drive. I have a Western Digital Passport, 120 GB, powered via the USB cable. It's very fast, very small, and has been very reliable with almost daily use over the last couple of years. When I connect the drive to my computer, I have it set as my "K" drive. When i take it home, I force it to be my "K" drive as well (once set, it never changes). Obviously, you'd make it whatever drive is appropriate for your systems. For my personal projects, I save all of my projects to the portable so all of the mapping works on any computer I happen to be working at. I use the Microsoft SyncToy (free) to synchronize the portable drive with a folder on my computer (for backup purposes). If you were creative, you could setup the folder structure on the portable drive to simulate the drive/folder structure on the server. Plug in the drive to your office workstation and let it assign whatever drive letter it defaults to. Copy your folders over similar to this: (office) P:\Projects\2008\Restaurant\yourfiles... (portable) W:\Projects\2008\Restaurant\yourfiles... When you take your drive home, force the portable drive to show up as the same drive letter you use at work. Or, you could ignore the drive letter on the portable, and create a new drive on your home workstation that is the same as your office drive letter. (office) P:\Projects\2008\Restaurant\yourfiles... (portable) W:\Projects\2008\Restaurant\yourfiles... (home) P:\Projects\2008\Restaurant\yourfiles... When you're done, copy it back to the portable, then back to the server when you get back to the office. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 My 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee gets between 13 and 15 MPG on my daily 56 mi commute. Of course, it's full time 4x4 with a 5.2L V8, so I can't complain too much - it's my own fault.... Mine is a '99 Jeep Cherokee, 4L six, selectable 4x or 2x rear-wheel drive. It weighs about half what the Grand Cherokee does and cost a lot less. Still, not great on gas. But my commute is still one flight of stairs, and my wife works a mile or so away, usually walks. We don't don't drive more than 10K miles per year, so trading up just for fuel economy would actually cost us more than sticking with our workhorse Jeep. While in Boston for the DMVC, I had the pleasure of seeing our old Lightscape-founder friend Stuart Feldman again. At the Cgarchitect party in LA two years ago he had this program he was working on to allow interactive work between locations via the web. He now has a product based on it, Cosimo http://www.cozimo.com/ They were conference sponsors. Have a look, it could help with working remotely. I've also thought a variation of a forum like this one might be useful for a team to use to organize comments and files. It would be a closed, internal system but otherwise a regular forum. I'm sure many people already do that. Nothing replaces people working together being together, but sometimes that's not possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 I wouldn't discount the amount of your income tax money that goes towards oil in a wide variety of ways. The amount we pay at the pump can be a bit deceptive. But that is politics, and I should definitely avoid that on this board. An alternate solution would be to invest a $1000 into a motorcycle that gets 70 or so miles per gallon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 An alternate solution would be to invest a $1000 into a motorcycle that gets 70 or so miles per gallon. Says the man with no children. If it's just the cost of gas that is driving a desire to telecommute part of the time, it might be easier to get your employer to help with the cost rather than re-inventing the workflow. Or organize a carpool to/from your work area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted May 29, 2008 Share Posted May 29, 2008 Says the man with no children. Off topic, but my sister finally hung up the keys to her Jeep Wrangler now that her 4th kid is on the way. She sold her first Wrangler when she was pregnant with her 2nd child, but couldn't resist, and bought another one. Somehow she managed to squeeze 2 car seats in the back. I am guessing she is already counting down the days until she can buy another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted May 29, 2008 Author Share Posted May 29, 2008 My wife has already killed any dreams of mine where a motorcycle is concerned and having children just drove more nails into that coffin. I like the idea of my office paying for the extra gas but that might be a hard sell, I don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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