need help with network rendering ( I didi search and don't understand)

Well I'm new to this forum and not sure if I'm in the right place. I did a search but I don't understand and want to knwo fi someone coudl break down network rendering into basic terms. I serach all through online and youtube and got the network up and running. I was able to get backburner running but ran into two mqain problems I dont know how to correct.

I have a quad core processor at 16 gigs of ram i'm using this as the master computer I have two old computers a dual core and single processor. I need to set up a network render as My images are getting rather big.

i set the quad core as the master

and i set the first computer just to test it as the slave or renderign server

I also read i could use the master as a rendering server as well

but when i open them the master computer says it is missign the plugin and cant render and the secodn computer opens up max and tries to render btu says it cant read ro right to file.


any help anyone coudl give me woudl be greatly appreciated.

First, make sure you have shared the folder you're reading from (where the project resides) as well as the folder you're writing to (where you're saving the rendered frames) and your render nodes have permission to read/write to those folders. This includes other folders where textures/maps may live.

If you open the max file on your main computer (the quad core I'm assuming), if there is any warning dialogs that come up at all (missing plugins, missing maps, missing UVW coordinates, etc.), fix those first because they'll stop the render on any node you try to render from.

Also, any plugin you use has to be installed and correctly working on each render node.

To bypass a lot of headaches, I have a mapped network drive that I work from (even on my workstation). This is because if I have any file whose path starts with "c:\..." (for example), then each render node will be looking for that texture/whathaveyou from the c: drive, and unless you copy every supporting file to every node across your farm, you'll run into missing file errors. So I use network drive "M:" as the base drive for any of my machines, including my local workstation.

Hope this helps, let us know if you need any clarification.

Btw, if you don't want to set up mapped network drives, you can archive your scene and have you render nodes render the expanded archived scene. You'll have to do that each time you render though. I think it'd be easier for one render, but not as a permanent solution.

Choose an online render farm will save your energy and time,there are cheap ones that could make a help.