viz and back burner

Hi,

I work IT for a school district and we are trying to set up network rendering in
one of our cad labs.  We run novell/netware client/servers at our schools here
and I am running into a problem.

I set up the manager machine, and set up the network render option under render
options.  Launch several other work stations as servers.  The back burner sees
all systems, and says they are all idle.  I configure and submit the file to
render over the network and then start the job.  No matter what I do, only one
machine can render it over the network.  I did set the option under the render
options to use all available servers.  I have even set the max number of servers
to 10, and still only 1 machine will connect.

They are accessing a network drive, but all users have r-w-x permissions to it. 
We do run some opportunistic policies but the network manager here thinks that
should not be an issue.

This has to be a configuration issue I think.  Please anyone help with this, it
would be greatly appreciated.

Also, there is no search function I could find really for this discussion forum,
so I had to post this topic.  Otherwise, I was hoping someone already figured
this out and I could have read their post

Are you rendering to single frames (ie tiff, tga)?  If you render to
.avi or other movie format, it will only use 1 server.

There is also a network rendering newsgroup at:
autodesk.3dsmax.backburner.

tlarkin wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I work IT for a school district and we are trying to set up network
rendering in one of our cad labs.  We run novell/netware client/servers at our
schools here and I am running into a problem.
> 
> I set up the manager machine, and set up the network render option under
render options.  Launch several other work stations as servers.  The back burner
sees all systems, and says they are all idle.  I configure and submit the file
to render over the network and then start the job.  No matter what I do, only
one machine can render it over the network.  I did set the option under the
render options to use all available servers.  I have even set the max number of
servers to 10, and still only 1 machine will connect.
> 
> They are accessing a network drive, but all users have r-w-x permissions to
it.  We do run some opportunistic policies but the network manager here thinks
that should not be an issue.
> 
> This has to be a configuration issue I think.  Please anyone help with
this, it would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Also, there is no search function I could find really for this discussion
forum, so I had to post this topic.  Otherwise, I was hoping someone already
figured this out and I could have read their post
> 

What file type are you trying to render? If it's an avi, only one machine can
work on it. For network rendering, we use targa files and compile them into
avi's in Adobe Premiere. 

Also make sure "use all available servers" is checked when you submit
the job to the rendering network. 

yes, we are trying to render .avis hahaha wow that is funny.  It didn't say that
in the documentation at all though.

Okay, so it works with single frames, but how would I got about rendering tons
of frames seperately and then compiling them into a movie type file, or render a
movie type file and take advantage of back burner?

So, far it works as you described, I can render an AVI file over the networ