Loading...
> >

What's the skinny on Render Nodes?

staticstatic Posts: 325
edited December 1969 in Carrara Discussion

As some of you know, I (very) recently made my move to Carrara. I got the downloads and installed Carrara 8.1 and then 8.5, but each of these has a program called Render Nodes. I am not sure what they do. My best guess is that they are a program that lets other computers use a bit of your CPU to decrease Render time, similar to the way some p2p sites have access to some of your directories and some CPU space so that others can download your shared stuff at their leisure.

This is what I "think" this might be.

So, 2 questions immediately arise:
1) If I am anywhere near correct, please let me know, and if not, could anyone give me an accurate description? That would be greatly appreciated.
2) Do I need to install these Render Nodes to use Carrara, or can I use the program without them?

Comments

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    staticdrifter said:
    So, 2 questions immediately arise:
    1) If I am anywhere near correct, please let me know, and if not, could anyone give me an accurate description? That would be greatly appreciated.
    2) Do I need to install these Render Nodes to use Carrara, or can I use the program without them?

    1) You are indeed "near correct." Render Nodes allow you to use a second computer to aid in rendering. More CPUs munching on ints, floats, doubles... YUM! It's all good.

    2) No. You can use Carrara on a single machine and not bother with Render Nodes.

    I've never tried Render Nodes myself...but if I did, I would have 36 cores of computing goodness...so I may do it one day just for the geek thrill of it.

  • staticstatic Posts: 325
    edited December 1969

    Thanks, Garstor

    I'm tight on space, so the more I can get away with not adding to the drive, the better off I am right now. ;-)
    Someday I'll get all the computing space I need, and the day after that, I'll have a heart attack and die! :P

  • GarstorGarstor Posts: 1,411
    edited December 1969

    staticdrifter said:
    Someday I'll get all the computing space I need, and the day after that, I'll have a heart attack and die! :P

    Not to rain on your parade...but I've found over the years that there is always something else that you want...it never ends! ;-)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    staticdrifter said:
    As some of you know, I (very) recently made my move to Carrara. I got the downloads and installed Carrara 8.1 and then 8.5, but each of these has a program called Render Nodes. I am not sure what they do. My best guess is that they are a program that lets other computers use a bit of your CPU to decrease Render time, similar to the way some p2p sites have access to some of your directories and some CPU space so that others can download your shared stuff at their leisure.

    This is what I "think" this might be.

    So, 2 questions immediately arise:
    1) If I am anywhere near correct, please let me know, and if not, could anyone give me an accurate description? That would be greatly appreciated.
    2) Do I need to install these Render Nodes to use Carrara, or can I use the program without them?


    Okay, so about the Render Nodes:


    The Render Nodes actually are never installed on the host machine. They are meant to be installed on the client machines. If you install the Node on your host machine it will screw up the Carrara install as the Node installer will overwrite the full version of Carrara.


    The network render function is only available through the render batch queue.


    Another thing to remember is if you install something like a Howie Farkes scene with custom plants and leaves, or if you create your own, you will need to make sure they are installed on the Node machines as well.


    I don't know all the backside computer mongery that goes on, but Carrara will load the scene first and then it sends the data to the clients based on how you've set your network rendering preferences in the Render Room. All the scene data such as image maps, etc. are transferred to the client machines' DAZ temp folder and they work on their portion of the image and send it back to the host where it's integrated with the host's portion of the render. If using GI, or SSS each Node will calculate it's own lighting.


    That's the crib notes version at it's most basic, and probably riddled with a few of my own misconceptions. ;-)

  • staticstatic Posts: 325
    edited March 2013

    That's good to know. Well, I'll just slip those Render Node apps over onto my storage drive and leave them alone.
    Thanks, evilproducer!

    Post edited by static on
Sign In or Register to comment.