Caustic discussion in cgtalk

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=393937

Renderama Slave tips

A discussion in cgtalk regarding about setting render slave...

a reply by Ryan Mininger (gdogfunk)

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The way I set up multiple render slaves on a multi-processor machine is the following:

1) Create a folder called 'Slave1' and copy the EI sockets, EI shaders, and EI resources folders, Renderama Slave, and Camera apps to this new folder.

2) Launch camera from this new slave folder and set your memory preferences.

3) Duplicate the 'Slave1' folder and rename 'Slave2'.

4) Launch the Renderama Slave app from the second folder and choose a different port number...something like 1617. I usually just increment my port numbers...1616, 1617, 1618, 1619, etc...


5) If you want autostarting slaves on OSX, you need to add the Renderama Slave apps under your 'Accounts' settings under the Users in the system prefs...On the PC, you just add an alias to the startup folder for each Renderama Slave app under the Docs and Settings folder in Windows Explorer.

6) In Renderama, add your new IPs to the list...192.168.1.201:1616, 192.168.1.201:1617...etc.

Oh...and if you are doing this on the PC, I found I had to rename the Renderama Slave app in the second folder to Renderama Slave2, as well as the other resource file so Windows see 2 different apps.

Also remember that you need to have all plugins on each of the slaves for the appropriate operating system. Some plugs are not net render friendly and others have certain setup parameters....you'll have to look at any thir-party docs to see if this applies in your case.

I also set my PC that aren't hooked up to monitors to just obtain the IP manually and I tell it what IP to be...that way the slave list never changes and I know which slave is which if any have errors.

There might be better ways to do this, but this is how I setup my farm in my office.

Hope this helps!

Ryan

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additional input from Matthoff

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"1) Create a folder called 'Slave1' and copy the EI sockets, EI shaders, and EI resources folders, Renderama Slave, and Camera apps to this new folder. "


Also make sure you copy the EI Shared Memory Lib.bundle file.
Make sure the new folder isn't a subfolder of the main EI folder.

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