What happened?

Every now and then I’m not able to open the “Asset Tracker” in 3ds max. I’ve tried using the shortcut (shift+T) and clicking to it via the menu, but nothing happens. Apparently I’m not the only one, so I thought I’d share what I have found out works pretty great.

Sometimes the asset tracker window would be hiding outside the desktop area or on my second monitor. To check this, the first thing I do is to try open up asset tracking (so the window in theory would be selected). Hold down the windows button and then click your left/right arrow key a couple of times to see if it shows up on screen again.

If this didn’t work,  I used to deleted the whole ENU folder as suggested on Autodesk’s own site.

The big problem here is that while all your problems are pretty likely to go away, you’ll loose all of your customized interface settings and have to set everything up again. This can be a huge pain.

Updated quicker solution (19-10-2017)

It’s been a while since this bug has happened to me, but today it did! Even though the original solution I posted last year still works great, it is a hassle. So try this first and if it doesn’t work for you, just skip this section and go to the original one.

1. Download the Connecter app for 3ds max (amazing assets app btw.)
2. Drag one of your assets into the 3ds max viewport
3. Click “About/Config…”
   
4. Click “3ds Max: Asset Tracking…”
   
5. Voila!

A more targeted solution

I’ve spend a few hours on tracking down the thing in the ENU folder that was causing this bug. I started out by deleting stuff in the ENU folder systematically. Then I started up max to see if the bug was gone, if not: repeat. When I finally found the file that was the problem, I took the same approach and started deleting lines of “code” inside the file until the bug was gone. Slowly I narrowed it down to this line of text (marked in yellow) in the 3dsmax.ini file:

The file is just inside the ENU folder as seen below.

To fix the asset tracker not opening, do the following:

1. Close all instances of 3ds max
2. Navigate to: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2016 – 64bit\ENU
3. Open the 3dsmax.ini file (right click and “open with” notepad)
4. Find the line above that I’ve marked in yellow: InstallPath=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2016\ (your’s might end in 2017 or what ever version you have)
5. Delete that line and click save

When you start up max the next time you’ll be met with the unit conversion pop-up (just click ok) and the template startup screen. Everything else should be intact.

I’m still not sure what is causing this bug, but this fix will have your asset tracking working again quickly without messing up your interface.

How to fix it

If you are having problems trying to open the Scene States in 3ds max and you are using a 3Dconnexion product (like the SpaceMouse Pro I’m using), go download the latest driver, reboot and you should once again have your Scene States back!

As you can see from my screenshot I’m using the 10.5.4 version and there is now a newer driver, but I simply don’t dare to update now it’s finally working! I’m pretty sure the latest one should work for you too, but in case it doesn’t let me know and I still have the 10.5.4 installer I can send for you to try.

Good luck!

This post looks a bit different than when I posted it a few weeks ago. It now reflects the changes I’ve had to do.

On top of everything else life is throwing at me at the moment, I was posting here weekly. To think of something new every week was beginning to feel stressful.

Thinking I could schedule my way out of this feeling, I took a break for a few weeks to make a plan for the “future” of the blog.

I now have months of blog post topics that builds upon themselves. Almost looking like the index of a book or a course. But after spending some days really thinking about executing this new plan and talking to my spouse about it, I have come to realize that the effort and time to do it in a good and meaningful way, just isn’t possible at this moment. I would be taking on too much.

While the plan is on standby, I’m going to be treating the blog more casually. I will not be posting every week as I have done before, but do it when inspiration strikes and I want to share something.

This also means that I won’t be sending out weekly emails to my dear subscribers any longer. I will however, send you a heads-up when the occasional new blog post goes up.

I want this blog to be a resource for getting into the industry and for the ones already there. To find inspiration and occasionally learn something new. Not only related to hardware/software, composition, color, image quality etc. but also work life itself.

The big “plan” has to wait

People near to me mostly know what it is I do, but most of them don’t know more than I sit in front of a computer and work with 3D. Maybe it’s just me, but talking to someone about something they don’t find particularly interesting, feels odd.

It’s small talk and small talk is fine. It can be cozy and part of a healthy relationship between people interested in each other. My spouse can go on for hours about her day. Of cause most of the times it’s very interesting stuff (she might read this), but I just don’t know how she does it.

At times it feels likes the day passed without much happening. What did I spend 8 hours, in front of this damn monitor, on? Was I productive or did social media checking creep up on me again?

Keeping note of things

I hated that feeling. What a waste of time. Not having accomplished anything, but if I took the time to think about my day, this would of course not be true at all. I had actually completed a task – however small or meaningless it may have seemed when working on it.

So I started to keep track of what I had done on a giving day. You can call it a log, a journal, a list or what ever, the important thing is that I began to write it down.

Every night before I go to bed, I will take a couple of minuttes (or longer if the words are flowing) and write down what I have done. The form is not important. I started out with keywords and really short sentences. This is actually what I still do most days, but sometimes I write a bit more.

It’s mostly work related – as that is the point of the whole thing – but at times a few personal things sneaks it’s way in. I let it. It must be sneaking in for a reason.

Sticking to the schedule

I’ve been doing this for a few months now. Occasionally I miss a day, but I strive to fill in the gap the day after. Never to miss two days in a row. You can use anything to write this down, a notebook or on your phone, it doesn’t matter.

I’m using the Day One app for IOS as this allows me to go back every now and then and see how I’ve progressed. I also think it’ll be fun in a few years to read about my current struggles, achievements or just see if I’ve gotten better at small talk.

What I always end my notes with is adding an action item and ask myself:

“What is the main task I should work on tomorrow?”

It’s such a relief to sit down in front of the computer knowing what to work on. Your mind will also spend the night thinking about that task subconsciously as you sleep. I often have new ideas about the action item when I wake up.

The best thing about it

I was notoriously bad at making a realistic to-do list. Mostly I wouldn’t even get to complete the first item. This resulted in a bad feeling, as if I failed on that day.

I wouldn’t really know why these days happened. But by using only a few minuttes every day to write down what I had done, it forced me to think about the day in details I normally wouldn’t. Maybe I got carried away with technical 3D stuff or ended up having to redo something that took way longer than expected, but it’s okay. So maybe I didn’t even get past item no. 1 on my to-do list, but I did actually accomplish or learn a lot trying to do so. Or, I can use it as a kick in the butt if I wasted time on meaningless stuff. It’s a valuable lesson none the less.

After a couple of weeks doing this, my to-do lists actually got doable. I still struggle at estimating the time certain tasks will take, but now I know when to put in a buffer and what the most important task to focus on is.

Focus on a single task. If you complete that one of most importance, perfect, now everything else is just a bonus.

Render Node

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

Now you got your very own render node set up and sending jobs to it like a maniac, I’ll share a few ways to get more out of it and some helpful reminders.

Organize your assets

Having a well organized library of assets to use in your scene is a fantastic thing to have. It’s not quick to get it all sorted and it’s hard to keep in order when client work takes over your schedule. It is however worth setting up and will be a huge timesaver down the road.

When I only had my workstation do the renders, everything was mostly scattered about on a large harddisk inside the workstation. I had begun to organize my assets (textures, models, maps etc.) in folders based on the name/company of the asset or where I had bought them.

This was a quick and simple way as that was how the files were delivered. When I needed to find an asset, I would struggle to try and remember the brand of a specific chair or in what package that nice tree was in. That’s no way to work efficiently and it’s so easy to just stick with this quick and dirty solution of finding the asset, curse at the time it took, and then do it again on the next project.

Here’s a folder structure example of what works best for me now:

Models (main folder)

• Exterior
  • Plants
    • Trees
      • Tree 01.max
      • Super Special Leaf Texture.jpg
    • Tree Maps
      • Basic Leaf Texture 01.jpg
      • Basic Leaf Texture 02.jpg

• Interior
  • Sofas
    • Vintage Sofas
      • Vintage Sofa 01
        • Vintage Sofa 01.max
        • Super Special Leather Texture 01.jpg
    • Fabric Maps
      • Basic Cotton 01.jpg
      • Basic Leather 01.jpg

You can keep making subfolders from here to eternity, but that’s no fun to browse through later on. So do it as you find reasonable.

Notice how I have my basic textures in a model category folder and then custom maps in the specific model’s folder.

Put basic textures in a “main folder” and model specific ones in the model’s folder.

There’s no need to have the same leather texture in every one of your model folders, neither do I recommend just linking to a specific model folder for them all to share. This can get really messy and hard to manage.

Connecter app

There’s quite a few plugins for 3ds max out there that can help you organize your assets. The free Connecter app by CG Connected is by far my favorite and the only one I use now.

Take a look at some of their quick tutorials, it’s really simple and works like a charm. It even allows you to keep your messy file structure of your asset library, but you might as well start to organize them a bit better. Who knows if they stop the development of the app and it won’t work with a future version of max. If that happens, you’ll still know how to find your stuff and get it ready for a new asset manager app.

Use Network Paths

As I mentioned in Part II it is crucial that your assets links to a location your node will be able to read from. I highly recommend network paths.

The problem you are facing now is that all of your assets links to somewhere local on your workstation or an external hard drive – same thing, the render node won’t be able to read them.

Since I haven’t found a way to batch relink all of my assets, I do it as I need them -please write me if you know about one and I’ll update this guide asap.

The Connecter app makes this really quick and easy to do. It allows you to drag ‘n drop your models from the app directly in to the 3ds max viewport. After merging the model into the scene, the app will prompt you to relocate the texture paths if they aren’t matching. If you are dragging in old models you have already mapped textures to locally, the app won’t prompt you. In this case you can just use the Relink Bitmaps plugin to remap the links through a network path (as explained in Part II).

To apply network paths to your new models, you need to browse for the location fairly close to the asset you are using.

Here I’ve browsed to my “…/models/interior” folder and the app managed to find the missing assets in a subfolder. Next time you drag in a model, you can simply click the history tab and then click “search”. I’ve tried to add the same path to the “Favorites” button, but for some reason this doesn’t seem to work. The app is still in the beta stage, so things might change.

The app does some work behind the scene and relinks the model you dragged in with it’s new paths. So the next time you drag that model in, the paths are remembered and will work with the render node. Pretty nice right?

Rendering your first job on the node

In case you missed it in the guide from Autodesk on how to use backburner, it’s crucial that you remember to specify where the render node should save the rendered image. If you forget this, the image is lost and you have to render again. So make this the first step when you set up the render job:

Remember to browse to the save location through the “Network” group and not “This PC” so you’ll get a network path – yeah I’m really trying to make you remember that you are now working via network.

Render passes and file formats

The same thing goes for your render passes. Save them to a network location (preferably the same as your normal image output. If you’re not feeling too fancy, I recommend 16- or 32bit tiffs as you get more image information (texture details and lighting) to play with later in Photoshop.

In Photoshop you can load them all at once by using the “Load Files into Stack” option. Like this:

I hate all these separate render passes lying around in folders, it’s a mess. So what I find really great is to save my render output in the .exr format. This will result in just a single .exr file that includes everything (the main image and all your render passes).

The only downside is that Photoshop can’t separate all those passes into layers unless you get the 50$ (It’s now free!) ProEXR plugin from fnord.  Update: There’s also a free plugin called Exr-IO this one seems a bit more user friendly, so I’ll personally try it out soon.

Distributed rendering

While it’s great to be able to send render jobs to the node and continue work on your workstation, there will be times where you’ll only have one big image to do or maybe an animation. This is where distributed rendering (DR) comes in handy.

Basically, the DR option of your render engine will use both/all your available machines to work on just one single image.

Speed up the start up

If you want to save a little money on your electrical bill, turn off the render node when you know you won’t be needing it for a period of time. Mine doesn’t run during the night unless it’s actually working on an image. That meant that every time I would turn it on, I had to log on through TeamViewer to launch the Backburner Server, Corona DR server etc.

You can make windows do that for you when the node starts up – also remove any password/login stuff on the node so you don’t have to type that in.

Its really simple to do: How to make a program run at startup on any computer – quick and easy guide from howtogeek.com

Now you can just power on the node, wait for it’s name to pop up in a TeamViewer notification or see it in the Backburner Manager on your workstation. You are now ready to start sending render jobs to it.

Keep an eye on the CPU temperature

During the many hours of work your node will heat up. The Xeons are build to operate well without damage at fairly high temperatures. Even though they are able to do this, I found it assuring to know that things weren’t overheating.

On the node you can install a very simpel program called HWMonitor. Launch this when you are rendering your first render job and make sure the temperatures doesn’t go above 85 degrees celsius (185F). If they do, there’s something wrong with your CPU cooler or airflow through the case. If they don’t, be happy and check them again when summer time arrives.

Happy rendering!

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!