Qmasterr and Shake - does Shake need to be installed on all CPU's?
by Michael Buday
on
Feb 12, 2007 at 5:32:27 pm
I'm running Qmaster quite successfully on my compositing CPU, and it's very handy for submitting batches of SHK files to be rendered while I take a break to attend to other things. However, I cannot get Qmaster to render Shake scripts on other CPU's with Qmaster installed. Everything is setup properly and all the CPU's "see" each other - but the remote CPU's never participate in the net-render process, even though they're registered properly in the Qadministrator application.
So a question:
Does Shake need to be installed on all net-render CPU's in order to remotely render Shake scripts? And if so, must they all be different serial numbers?
Re: Qmasterr and Shake - does Shake need to be installed on all CPU's? by Andrew Shanks on Feb 12, 2007 at 7:17:12 pm
I confess I haven't set up a full render farm myself (like yourself I use it on my single machine, and have used the render farms at post houses which IT have set up), but yes Shake needs to be on all your machines (as do any 3rd party plugins, macros, etc, that you have used in your main comp). Under the user licence you are allowed to have as many Mac render nodes as you like, so you can install your one copy on multiple CPU's for RENDERING purposes (you're just not allowed to use multiple copies of the same serial for actual compositing). I know some applications have a render only version, but i don't think (correct me if i'm wrong guys) Shake has a render only version. Give it a rev and let us know how you get on.
Re: Qmasterr and Shake - does Shake need to be installed on all CPU's? by Mark Tran-Tremble on Feb 13, 2007 at 3:30:58 pm
also note that i think batch rendering over a render farm usually requires you are working with and out putting an image sequence.
I don't think you can render a quicktime movie as you output on a renderfarm. you may be able to use it as file in your comp, but you need to render out a still sequence. you can then make this into your final output format. This will usually be quicker than rendering it all one processor.
Re: Qmasterr and Shake - does Shake need to be installed on all CPU's? by Michael Buday on Feb 13, 2007 at 7:23:33 pm
Thanks Mark. I did in fact get it all up and running and it's working great. Here's what I found:
- Yes, despite Apples's instructions to the contrary, I did have to install Shake on all the render CPU's as Andrew said (including all macros's, plug-ins, etc.)
- You can in fact render Shake QT's movies via the "farm", but it does create a temp image sequence prior to calling QT and weaving into a proper QT movie based on your fileOut settings. The only annoying part is that it doesn't delete all the tempfiles after creating the QT movie, so I have to do that manually.
However, it's well worth the trouble because everything is rendering MUCH faster now and I'm getting alot more work done! Jus being able to send a batch of scripts to be rendered without creating a TXT file to do it makes this well worth the time it took to figure it out.
Re: Qmasterr and Shake - does Shake need to be installed on all CPU's? by keicol on Feb 14, 2007 at 6:35:56 am
It would rock my world if you gave us a step by step on this entire process. I've tried to simply use the Qmaster pane to submit scripts to the render farm. Compressor works fine and uses all processors when rendering a QT file however Shake scripts submitted through the Qmaster pane just accesses the host's processor. I have Shake on all the other machines and have tried in vane to set up a .h file in the nreal folder.
