john1983 Posted May 14, 2010 Share Posted May 14, 2010 Hi All Im wanting to buy a new computer for work, I do renders for offices using 3dmax and vray but the problem is my computer keeps crashing and its really slow so.... If i was to start again what would be the best computer to get for the job?? No budget... Cheers John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted May 14, 2010 Share Posted May 14, 2010 No budget?!?!?!? Wait, is that "No budget" as in "No money" or "No budget" as in "The sky's the limit"? Build yourself a render farm. Many people think building a farm requires a lot of money, but actually, you can build a farm with very little expense. You can just use the computers you already have in the office. Just install Max on all of your machines and then render at night after everyone goes home. The only rule to keep in mind is that all the machines need to have the same system specs in order to maintain consistency throughout the rendered output. But if the farm is not an option, or if you need to be able to produce renders during regular business hours, check my Computer Details. The core i7 processor with 12GB RAM spits out renders pretty quickly. But if you hook up two of them, as a little mini farm, you could render almost twice as fast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1983 Posted May 14, 2010 Author Share Posted May 14, 2010 yeah bit stupid putting no budget really, say 5k ish. yeah thought about render farm but need to render during working hours. yeah ill have a look at your spec, how much are we talking to get a computer of your spec, if you dont mind me asking Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted May 14, 2010 Share Posted May 14, 2010 My computer was around $2,200 USD. We just got two of them at the office and hooked them up as a dedicated render station. We got a price break and I think we paid just a little over 4k for the pair. So you could get two of them and still stay under your 5k limit. Although I don't know how prices compare in the U.K.? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1983 Posted May 14, 2010 Author Share Posted May 14, 2010 these render farms... i have two computers at the moment, one i do drawings on and the other i do renders on.. if i wanted to set a render farm up using both of them how would i do it and would i still be able to use one of them while its rendering? ive seen something on the internet about renderfarms but it says you need 3 computers.??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted May 14, 2010 Share Posted May 14, 2010 No, you don't need 3 computers. You can build a farm with as few as 2 computers. But, you will need 3 computers if you want to continue working on one of them while the other 2 are rendering. You can't work on a computer while it's rendering because the rendering process uses all available resources. We have two computers set up as a dedicated rendering station in the back of our office. I can send a render job from my computer and continue working while the rendering is going on in the back. It's the same as if I sent something to the printer. All the spooling and printing happens at the printer, while I'm free to continue working. But, if I need to get something rendered even quicker, I can easily add my computer to the farm, with the click of a button, and therefore have 3 computers rendering out the image. But as I said, you can't work while your computer is rendering, so you would need another computer if you wanted to continue working. I'm sure you can see how this is a never ending cycle. The more machines you have on the farm, the faster you can render. But for all the computers included in the farm, you still need another one if you want to keep working. It's a little tricky to get the farm set up though. It took some trial and error for us to get ours set up and get the computers communicating with each other. You might want to take a look at these: http://augiru.augi.com/content/library/au07/data/paper/DV204-3.pdf http://www.3dv.com/images/down_on_the_farm.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1983 Posted May 17, 2010 Author Share Posted May 17, 2010 Morning Ive just got into work and having a go at setting the two computers up as a render farm, i dont suppose you know where theres a good tutorial on doing this from scratch do you? as i havent got a clue what im doing ha... John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 Did you take a look at the pdf's I posted? Also, take a look at this: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=5581724&linkID=9241177 And there's also Google: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=3ds+max+setting+up+a+render+farm&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=3ds+max+setting+up+a+render+farm&gs_rfai=&fp=c78e48b898b2787e Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1983 Posted May 17, 2010 Author Share Posted May 17, 2010 Did you take a look at the pdf's I posted? Also, take a look at this: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=5581724&linkID=9241177 And there's also Google: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=3ds+max+setting+up+a+render+farm&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=3ds+max+setting+up+a+render+farm&gs_rfai=&fp=c78e48b898b2787e ah yeah just noticed them sorry... right got a problem here i think tho... my main computer is on a domain which is tied in with the network for the whole company, and my other computer I have for rendering at the moment is a stand alone one thats not on the big network but just joined up to my main computer using a cable so i can transfer drawings across using a shared folder... can i still link them up together for use with backburner or do they both have to be on the same network?? if i can keep it the way it is now how do i make backburners monitor pick up the stand alone computer?. I think i could be out of my depth here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 Sorry, but this isn't something that I can talk you through. As I said previously, we had a lot of trial and error when we set up ours. I would have to actually be there, in your office, in order to help you. The best advice I can give you is to just do what we did. Read through the pdf's I posted and check the links I provided and then just start testing things out and eventually you will get it working. Otherwise, do you have an IT guy you can contact and have him come in and set it up for you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1983 Posted May 17, 2010 Author Share Posted May 17, 2010 ah its ok, ill keep trying with i, Ive found another pretty good tutorial im gonna look through too. Cheers for your help tho!! you've pointed me in the right direction anyway Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spittle Posted May 24, 2010 Share Posted May 24, 2010 So you can set up a render farm with only one licence of Max? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted May 24, 2010 Share Posted May 24, 2010 Yes, you only need one licensed copy. You load Max on all the computers in your farm, but you don't activate or try to use those copies. They are only used for rendering. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=5581724&linkID=9241177 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spittle Posted June 9, 2010 Share Posted June 9, 2010 Any ideas whether it's possible to have something rendering on one PC whilst working on another with only one Max licence? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted June 9, 2010 Share Posted June 9, 2010 You can do this as long as the other computer is available on your network. You can load Max on the other computer, just don't activate it. It can sit there and just be used for rendering. Then from your work computer, just use Backburner to send your render to the other computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1983 Posted July 14, 2010 Author Share Posted July 14, 2010 Hi Cad64 Ive got my render farm!! I ended up getting 4 pc's with this spec, Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H H55 Socket 1156 mATX Motherboard Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz Socket LGA1156 8MB L3 Cache Processor Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL7(7-8-7-20) 1.65V Unbuffered Non-ECC Palit Graphics Card – just to run VGA monitor Corsair 400W CX PSU Maxtor 250Gb HDD but when rendering using all of the nodes i end up getting lines accross the image, i think this must be each part of the image that each node renders, why is it doing this?? in the render setup i set split scan lines on and define it to have 4 strips and an over lap of 1 pixel.. is this wrong? what setting should i use to set the rendering up properly so it doesnt have the lines in? Cheers John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted July 14, 2010 Share Posted July 14, 2010 In your overlap setting, choose percentage, not pixels. One pixel is not going to be enough of an overlap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1983 Posted July 16, 2010 Author Share Posted July 16, 2010 Thank you!!! thats sorted it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cad64 Posted July 16, 2010 Share Posted July 16, 2010 So now that everything is working, how are your render times? Are you seeing a big difference? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1983 Posted July 16, 2010 Author Share Posted July 16, 2010 loads loads better, a render that used to take 8 hours to do is taking about 10-15 mins, im really impressed by it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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