Backburner: How does your office utilize it?

[TomD_Arch]

So after having set-up Backburner at the beginning of the week and successfully (after a few updates and lines of code install) using to get some large images done, i think the firm I work at is interested in utilizing it more often. What we are looking to do is utilize it over night when people are away from the computers.

 

Issue: How do we avoid having to walk around to the computers we want to use and log-in fire-up the server, etc.? Does your firm have people fire-up Backburner before they leave for the night? Are people always logged in? Do you also have to walk around and turn computers on and log-in to the server?

 

Are we using it correctly? It seems like you have to open the server at each computer and then log-in with the monitor at each computer. Also, whichever computer is going to be the manager has to have that open as well.

[Scott Schroeder]

One computer is the manager and needs to run the manager app. You can also use this computer as a render slave. It's best to have this as a non-user box on the network that is always running the manager.

 

On all of the network computers, all you need to do is start the server app. That's it. The rest will take care of itself. It's equally best to put a shortcut to the server app in the Start Up folder so this launches automagicaly when you log into the rendering account. We also have our vray DR spawner in the start up folder so everything we need launches on log in.

 

Where I used to work, backburner log ins where not a problem but that was a rendering studio so everyone understood the importance of making sure 100% of resources were rendering. There were also real consequences to a user continually failing to log into the rendering account. The idea was to enforce the fact that no matter how hard we work, if we don't have the render power needed we can never hit the deadline.

 

Where I work now, it's more of an issue as it is in-house and rendering is wizardry to most folks here, but I just use remote desktop connection manager to force log in everyone to the rendering account at night. It makes it easy to log in 40 PC's with one click of the button. Getting people to actually log off the rendering account, that's another can 'o worms.

 

Work with your firm. Make it a money thing. Show them that if you can't actually render, then it's pointless as to how cool their designs are as they will never see the deadline in time. Make a rendering account (ie you can call it RenderMyShit and make the password render1234) so you can easily manage things and it gives users less anxiety as when you are on their computer you won't be on with their actual user log in information.

[Jon Berntsen]

So after having set-up Backburner at the beginning of the week and successfully (after a few updates and lines of code install) using to get some large images done, i think the firm I work at is interested in utilizing it more often. What we are looking to do is utilize it over night when people are away from the computers.

 

Issue: How do we avoid having to walk around to the computers we want to use and log-in fire-up the server, etc.? Does your firm have people fire-up Backburner before they leave for the night? Are people always logged in? Do you also have to walk around and turn computers on and log-in to the server?

 

Are we using it correctly? It seems like you have to open the server at each computer and then log-in with the monitor at each computer. Also, whichever computer is going to be the manager has to have that open as well.

 

We have one dedicated computer as a server and manager. Call it #1. Anyone can send jobs to #1, and no else computers have the server running. Obviously just one manager and one server. Instead, use DR. Tick off DR before shipping to the manager, then #1 will bring in the computers with the spawner running. So basically, if you are leaving your computer for the day, or even for a lunch break or a meeting, just fire up the spawner and it will catch up on the rendering by #1. It is also fine to leave it on if you are just doing simple tasks like writing emails, reports or interpreting some drawings etc.

 

In my opinion, this is a more flexible solution than using all computers as servers. Just remember to enable "save hosts in scene".

Edited October 8, 2015 by chroma

[TomD_Arch]

We are using mental ray. I assume this spawner thing is something in V-Ray?

[Jon Berntsen]

We are using mental ray. I assume this spawner thing is something in V-Ray?

Yes, you are right. That is vray, sorry.

[Jesper Pedersen]

Hi Thomas,

When we first started using network rendering (in about 2002), it was the single biggest jump in productivity we have ever made ..easily, and benefits to quality of images and service as well!

Even if you only have 1 machine you should be "newtork" rendering, since as you probably know, it will let you queue several jobs. Our setup is the same as the others are describing (though simpler than what Scott is managing as we only have 5 machines on our network).

Good luck, tell management they would be fools not to invest in network rendering, in our case the only cost is a few additional render node licenses for (vRay and maxwell), less that a fraction of teh cost of even teh cheapest PC on the network! They've already paid for the hardware, so use it!

 

Regards

Jesper Pedersen, Managing Director

http://www.pedersenfocus.ie

[neil poppleton]

simple answer is make sure the server is always on each pc and within backburner monitor set the week - time schedule to only talk to certain pc's after hours and weekends.

[Scott Dombrowski]

You can have the server service start/stop upon logoff/logon. The procedure is in the Max Help (search the help for "backburner logoff" if this link doesn't work).