cg_Butler Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Hi all. A technical question for all! My workstation is a PC, everyone else uses Mac's of one form or another. Is it possible to add these Mac's in to a network to utilise their processing power? I've only ever had a completely PC/windows based setup and never even used a Mac! cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Penaloza Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 (edited) If you use MODO or Cinema 4D you can mix use OS and Hardware, now if you use 3ds Max you'll need to install windows in those machines and install 3ds Max on them, then you can use them as render nodes. Now the Macs should be running windows from boot and not in parallel for performances differences. Edited February 20, 2013 by fco3d Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cg_Butler Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 Thanks Francisco. It's 3ds max and Vray. Probably won't happen but good to know it's doable. What about installing windows 7 PC and a couple of render nodes on a MAC network, email server etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Penaloza Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Do not understand the question really, but a ecosystem of Windows and Mac it is possible, it is done all the time, I have something similar at home too but I use modo and cinema so my case is different. The only issue here is 3Ds Max, and V Ray since there is not a OSX version for this combo, you need to install Windows on those MAC computers to make it work. Now if you really need extra rendering power it would be worth to install windows on those Macs and tell the people that when they finish their work to reboot on windows, so you have access to all those computer to render overnight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cg_Butler Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 Exactly what I thought, thanks. I was just basically checking that it's not uncommon, and that it's easy, to add a couple of PC's in to a network that is currently completely Mac based. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Penaloza Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 now if everybody in your office uses Mac why you don't rather switch to Cinema 4D With V Ray instead just saying Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted February 21, 2013 Share Posted February 21, 2013 I am not very familiar with C4D or other cross platform 3d packages, we have toyed with the idea of adding some macs to our render farm (currently all pcs running deadline for 3ds/vray rendering), for AE rendering, in my research, it seems that if you wanted to render in AE on the PC render farm, you would need to submit from a PC, and same for the macs, this has kept us from working through it. We only have desktop macs and Imacs, so without dedicated rendering machines, we don't think it is feasible. On another note, be very careful of rendering on Imacs, years ago, we burned a few out trying to split up AE renders to them, they were not cooled adequately for %100 CPU usage, and overheated, sometimes just shutting down, sometimes never to come back. FYI, -Nils - Neoscape Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Penaloza Posted February 21, 2013 Share Posted February 21, 2013 On another note, be very careful of rendering on Imacs, years ago, we burned a few out trying to split up AE renders to them, they were not cooled adequately for %100 CPU usage, and overheated, sometimes just shutting down, sometimes never to come back. FYI, -Nils - Neoscape True that, I burn my power supply time ago for the same reason, thankfully I have to render nodes at home that do the hard work now, I even made a hackingtoch out of one for try just mac environment, and it work pretty good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cg_Butler Posted February 21, 2013 Author Share Posted February 21, 2013 It's more of a hyperthetical question at the moment. Not likely i will be using Mac's of any sort. I don't want to arrive there, announce i need to use them for rendering and then **** everything up! as long as i can add a workstation and rack mounted render nodes to their network that is all i need! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted February 24, 2013 Share Posted February 24, 2013 It's more of a hyperthetical question at the moment. Not likely i will be using Mac's of any sort. I don't want to arrive there, announce i need to use them for rendering and then **** everything up! as long as i can add a workstation and rack mounted render nodes to their network that is all i need! If its just rack mounted nodes then you dont need to add them to the network with the macs on. Just network them to your PC on a workgroup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cg_Butler Posted February 24, 2013 Author Share Posted February 24, 2013 That's mostly it yes. I will need to access an email server too though and a file server to save my work and files so they get backed up. Can that server be told to give me access too? Through file sharing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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