Render Node

Part I – “Affordable & Powerful”
Part II – “Network, 3ds Max & Backburner”
Part III – “Best Practices & Usage”

This is not a step-by-step guide as this is covered in great detail on many other sites. Instead I’ll gather the resources you need, link it here and add my own tips & tricks that most of the sites don’t mention.

Network Setup

Connection

Now you’ve got a render node sitting pretty over there in the corner, it’s time to get it up and running!

For this to work the best, you’ll need to connect your workstation and node to the same switch via ethernet cables. Getting a gigabit switch is advised for better transfer speeds. I went with a 8-port one from D-Link and it works great.

With everything connected and turned on, let’s get the two machines talking with each other.

What you need to do, is to create a Windows HomeGroup for your workstation and node to be a part of. This will allow your workstation to send data to your node and allow your node to access your workstation’s shared assets (mostly textures).

Creating a Windows HomeGroup Network

Mauro Huculak over at Windows Central has made a great guide on how to do this:

How to setup and manage windows 10 homegroup local network (opens in a new tab)

Once you’ve created your homegroup you can skip all the steps untill you get to “How to add computers to a HomeGroup”.

After that section continue to the next part: “How to share additional folders with your HomeGroup”.

Done.

Shareable Assets

Now that your HomeGroup is set up and you know how to share additional folders, you should see if you can access a shared workstation folder from your node. Try and transfer the 3ds Max installer to check speeds and accessibility.

If it doesn’t work as planned, hit up google with the error message you received or something simple like: “can’t access shared folder on HomeGroup”. I can’t cover them all here, so google is your best friend (as always).

When all is good, it’s time to start making your assets (3D models, textures, proxies etc.) accessible to the node. Make the folder where you keep your assets a shared folder on your HomeGroup and make sure you can access it from the node.

This is my shared assets folder setup.

(Will move everything to my NAS later)

There’s a few things that could go wrong when you send out your first render job to the node. Don’t worry, we’ll go through the big ones and you should be good to go soon.

Use Network Paths

When you send the job to the node, it reads the scene as it was on your workstation. I.e.: all the plugins you’ve used to create the scene, every proxy scattered and every single texture file probably points to somewhere local on your workstation’s drives.

If all your assets are on your D: drive the path for a texture would probably look like this: D:/Assets/Textures/Concrete/Concrete_Dark_01.jpg

This is a problem for the render node.

When it loads up the scene it expects to find that concrete texture image on the D-drive – but it doesn’t know that it’s the workstation’s D-drive.

With a path like that, it will look for it locally, but since there isn’t any D-drive in the node, it will fail to load it and you won’t see that beautiful concrete texture in your finished render.

What you need to do is to make sure that your scene assets are all mapped with a network path instead of a local path.

How a network path looks like in 3ds Max’s Asset Tracking (Shit+T)

Depending on how many assets you have, changing all of them one by one from their local path to the network path, will take ages. The whole point of the render node was to save time. I hope you’re not having second thoughts, I promise you all this work will be worth it in the end.

I haven’t yet found a way that can batch remap all of your assets. So what I did with old scenes was to use Colin Senner’s free Relink Bitmaps script – I’ll go in to detail on this script in a later post. For now a quick way to redo your scene’s assets’ paths, is to open up 3ds Max’s Asset Tracking (Shit+T), mark all the assets, right click and choose strip path.

Now start up Relink Bitmaps. Add a new “Saved path” by clicking the + icon and browse to your assets folder. It’s crucial that you find your folder through “Network” and not just through “This PC”. Its basically the same thing, but when you do it through the network path, the node will know where to look.

When you’ve added the network path to your assets, click the big “Relink” button and wait. Any missing textures will show up on the right and you might need to add more network folder paths for them to be found.

Installing The Software

3ds Max & Backburner

You won’t be needing a separate licens for 3ds Max. Just install it and close the window when it asks you to activate or use it as a trial and you are good to go. Later on when you are sending a render job to the node, max opens in a special mode and won’t trigger any activation prompt.

Backburner should install as standard when you run the 3ds Max installer, but check that you have it on both your workstation and node.

Render Engine

Installing your render engine depends entirely on the product you are using. I’m using the Corona Render engine. I get three (3) render node licenses included in the price. With Vray you need to pay a fixed amount per render node license. So add that to the node cost if Vray is your thing.

Check your installed 3ds Max version and tick the DR server option

Plugins

I’m a big fan of plugins, but for the node to understand the data you send it (a render job), you will also have to install the plugins on that node. Most plugins have an option to “install on render node, slave or DR” in the install menu, like the Corona screenshot above.

Remember to also copy the plugins you’ve installed without a typical .exe installer to your node. Look in your max root /plugins folder.

Extras

Instead of having an extra monitor, mouse and keyboard connected, I highly recommend handling your node via remote access. It’s nice being able to see what’s going on from the comfort of your workstation.

For this purpose I use a free program called TeamViewer. With this you can connect to the node via your workstation, laptop etc. and a window with the node’s desktop will pop up. From here you can control it as if you had your peripherals directly connected to it.

How To Setup Backburner:

Autodesk has a great article describing multiple scenarios here. Click on the “Basic Procedure 2″ to get straight to the steps you’ll need in this case.

What’s Next?

Alright, I’m sure you have a lot on your to-do list. It might take a day or two to get working, but I hope I’ve saved you some time and hassle with this post.

In part III you will learn some more basics, tips & tricks when using your render node.

Render Node

Part I – “Affordable & Powerful”
Part II – “Network, 3ds Max & Backburner”
Part III – “Best Practices & Usage”

What & When To Buy

It’s very easy to get caught in the ever improving hardware race. So think about why you want to invest in a render node and what you can actually afford.

If you can’t buy it without going in to debt, it probably means you don’t need it or are making poor business decisions (more on that some other time).

In my case I needed something to push work to when I had projects requiring multiple camera angles or different scenes. Having a render node would allow me to send a render job out and continue working on the next one immediately. It also freed up time to test stuff while getting to the next to-do item in the scene. No one likes waiting for a render to finish before they can continue to work.

As a bonus, the node is actually 2x as fast at rendering compared to my Intel i7 5820k workstation. Not bad considering the node was also cheaper.

The Hardware For This Build

As I’m writing this post, this type of CPU build is regarded as the best “bang-for-the-buck”.

It does require two Xeon CPUs and a special motherboard, so if you are on a really tight budget, I can highly recommend this guide by Dimitris over at pcfoo.com: “The -almost- $500 Rendering Node”. It is from 2013, but the principles does still very much apply.

Item List:

• Case: Fractal Design Node 605
  • I wanted a nice, subtle and small(ish) node that I wouldn’t mind having visible in the office. You can however go with any ATX form factor for this build. Just make sure to check there is enough clearance for the CPU coolers you get.
    
• Motherboard: ASUS Z9PA-D8
  • This motherboard was the cheapest I could find that had the ATX form factor. It also had onboard GPU so I didn’t need to get a separate one. Note that this type of motherboard uses the ECC ram type.
    
    
    
• CPUs: 2x Xeon E5 2670 2.6Ghz SR0kX
  • I bought all the hardware from “local” resellers. It was only the Xeons I had to get off of eBay. They are insanely cheap compared to the power you get. They’ve even gotten cheaper since I build my node. The reason seems to be that many big companies has swapped their servers for newer tech and the market is now flooded with these bad boys. Don’t worry about how they’ll hold up – they will.
    
    
    
• CPU Coolers: 2x Noctua NH-D9DX i4 3U
  • Expensive stuff, but the quality is awesome and my research indicated they would fit. You might be able to get something cheaper, but these ones I know fit and does a good job.
    
    
    
• Memory: 8x DDR3 1600 8GB Kingston ECC R 1,5V (KVR16R11D8/8HB) total of 64GB.
  • Just get the cheapest ones you can get hold of, but be sure to check that they will match the motherboard you get. Most brands has a list of compatibable memory on their website. Double check you get the right type: ECC vs Non-ECC. Ask the reseller if in doubt.
    
    
    
• PSU: EVGA Supernova G2 650W 80 Gold
  • The Xeons aren’t that power hungry and in this build there is no GPU that needs power. I chose this one as it had gotten great reviews, was fairly priced and had two 8-pin power cables needed for a dual CPU motherboard. The “Gold” certification helps a little on the power bill in the long run.
    
    
    
• Harddrive: 120gb Intel SSD.
  • Any SSD you can get your hands on. You only need Windows, 3ds max and plugins on it. All assets will be shared via network. You can even go with a standard harddrive, but why bother as SSDs are now so damn cheap, will last longer and are much faster.
    
• Extra Case Fan: Noctua 120 mm NF-S12A PWM
  • The Fractal case has two 120mm fans already mounted. One in each end. Oddly both were sat to take air in. I was a bit worried about heat from a dual Xeon setup in such a small case. Hence the extra case fan. I mounted the two Fractal fans in one side to take air in and the powerful Noctua fan on the opposite side to take the warm air out. Thereby creating a bit of a vacuum. 

Putting The Stuff Together

I won’t go in to details on how the hardware is put together. If you are completely new to this, I highly suggest that you get a friend who knows something about it to help you. Youtube is also a great place to see how it’s done:

This guy knows his stuff: How to build a computer in 30 minutes (youtube link)

Again, google and youtube is your friend.

Here’s a quick photo of my node when everything is connected.

I removed the harddrive bays to get better airflow – and yeah, the CPU coolers had me worried for a second, but they fit!

What’s Next?

If you happen to start the build and get to the windows installation, a good tip is to setup your login credentials to match the ones you have on your workstation. I.e. same username and password. It will make it easier later on.

General guide lines for setting up the network, 3ds max and backburner will be covered in part II next week. Sign up below to get notified the moment it goes live.

See you in part II!