Network Render

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

I’ve/am implementing a network renderer for blender using java, and it is getting kind of alright, it might be worth looking at (once I’ve got rid of the bugs) for anyone thats got access to more than one computer. (It uses command line parameters to open the file and render one frame in the background)

What I want to know, is whether it would be better to cache the blend files and textures on the machines that are doing the rendering, or just open them from their origional directory (hence meaning say 20-30MB of textures moving across the network at the start (is that amount of textures realistic?))

Or should I Implement both ways (ouch). Thoughts/comments?

2

I think two ways is better, because the user can chosse the metod.

If you have a windows machine, take a look on my proggie:

http://www.nicodigital.com/xoops/html/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=13

3

I think you should keep the .blend unique and store frames locally, retrieve them at the end.

If you are on a real OS (Linux) you can want to have a look at my network renderer

http://www.selleri.org/Blender/

in the ‘scripts’ section

Stefano

4

Well here is an early version of it, it should work cross-platform, and hopefully will soon have a prettier interface. You can have a client and a server on a machine, but not many clients on one. Also look at the console to see how its going. The GUI is really stuffed up, but at least it works…

http://www.angelfire.com/ks/bobthevirus/3dstuff/NetRender.zip

instructions are in the readme file.

Oh, you need the java runtime environment, which you probably already have

S68 - the problem is tht the frames aren’t the big part, its normally the textures that are, but I’m keeping a unique.blend at the mo anyway - as thats the easiest.

Caronte - I’m on XP, and it doesn’t seem to be 100% working properly… any ideas?

5

Hows the progress on this going? I tested the first version but couldn’t get it going yet…

6

I don’t know what do you want to say with: “100% properly” without more details, anyway you can register un my website to enter the forum about BlenderTools (You will see screen snapshots and messages on the english forum (the only english on my site))

Sorry for the delay and sorry for my poor english. :slight_smile:

7

I submitted this over at blender.org.
http://www.pablosbrain.com/blenderideas/networkrender/
Its a mockup of how network rendering could be integrated into blender… figure you might be a little interested in it. Or not… who knows.

8

Yup, I’m very interested, and I’ll see what I can do to improve my interface… Though I don’t know C or C++ so It’ll still be in java. I’m working on better Alogrithms for it now.