Networking PC's
jeht01_11f062ec46
Posts: 18
I'm thinking of setting up an small render farm using a few new PC's that are at the current level of my main PC. this way i will have 3 PC's running everything. but my question is using the render nodes or possibly setting up a parallel PC from the 3 will this in any way drastically improve the performance of my current setup that have now (my main PC and a computer that is about 1/4th the power. linked by render nodes) or would i really be just wasting money?
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Depends on what you want to do. Only you can judge if it's a waste of money as it is your money. ;-)
Time wise, (especially for animation) a render farm can dramatically speed things up. If you do still images with Global Illumination, or very high render settings, then a render farm can help as well.
Another thing to know about Carrara and rendering is that the bang you want is the total number of cpu cores - not how good the graphics card is. So if you're buying a really nice dual core computer with expensive graphics card(s), yeah... probably spending a lot more money than what it's worth. But if your talking adding quad cores or higher at a really reasonable price... perhaps it'll be worth it.
My last PC decision was to build a new one just for Carrara - so I made an eight core machine with the idea of possibly building another in the future as a render node.
Good point about the graphics card Dart!
i agree the cores are really what will give the systems the power. I'm running an eight core now and was looking at building 2 more. I'm attempting to make animations but the time it takes is way to long. if i was making still images it would be fine. but I'm trying to find out of the render nodes are really that good. can they take all the power of each computer and divide the work of the render for all of them to handle or is all the work still mostly sitting on the main PC?
C8 has better node management than C7.2 which is what I'm using. Others can speak to how well it works. My C7.2 nodes can cut my render time in half. I have an older computer and a newer computer on my network. If all your computers are equal, the speed increase should be substantial. Now remember, it's not just the cores on the client machines. The more RAM for all the machines will help your performance as well.
Are you sure about that? During rendering my 8 cores are rendering close to 100% all the time. But my RAM is only using 60% of the 6 GB. So to me it looks useless to add more RAM. The bottleneck is my CPU. Or am I wrong?
Hi.
I think you are right. In fact I don't think the graphics card is such an issue either. It's sheer raw power processing speed you need. The more cores the better, the more machines the better.
I run a 3 machine network. One i7 and two older machines which when combined over the network halve rendering time, which is essential, otherwise certain frames I can justify at 2 and a half mins eash would be 5 mins and an awful long wait.
However - due to bugs in Carrara, the network set up will not work for all situations. I cannot get volumetric lighting to render over my network for example. Very annoying as I'm trying to re-create a Blade Runner feel so that kind of lighting is essential.
The best solution is the simplest one. A Single machine with tons of cores and processor speed, enough memory so that it never has to page, and a graphics card good enough to handle your editing.
Back to the real world. Using your older machines to speed up rendering (and or help with faster test renders) helps.
Are you sure about that? During rendering my 8 cores are rendering close to 100% all the time. But my RAM is only using 60% of the 6 GB. So to me it looks useless to add more RAM. The bottleneck is my CPU. Or am I wrong?
Not entirely sure, but the more RAM you have, the more Carrara can keep in memory and the less swapping of data to the scratch disk. With the amounts of RAM possible these days, it's possible that Carrara may not need it all, which is good, because that saves some for other processes. ;-)
when you use the render nodes is it using all the available processing power or is it just speeding up to the lowest power computer and the rest of the more powerful core only use the amount that would equal the low power core?
In an animation they each render their own frame. Therefore they each use up as much CPU as possible.
On the last frame (or few frames depending on how many nodes you have), they share the same frame to render (which is quite satisfying to watch as you can make believe you have a 16 core machine or whatever).
At the start the controlling machine (the one you launch the batch render with), has to load the scene file into Carrara. Then as it's rendering the first frame it begins to copy the scene file over to the other machines. They use the Runtime on the machine that launched the batch process, so all machines run times don't have to be in sync.
Hope that helps.
yes, that that helps. this way i know i can add whatever i want to and know that the power added is really being used.
I am running a Quad core desktop with 4 GB Ram and and two identical dual core laptops with 4 GB Ram and a quad core laptop with 4 GB RAM.
I have seen much improvement.
My biggest problem was the nodes handled GI differently than the host. I just upped from the .153 beta to the 8.1. I also have tried saving my file internally instead of locally and the lighting differences look like they may have vanished. More testing to do. And so far if they are really gone, not sure which a fore mentioned change is responsible.
Hope that may be of some help.
Shawn.
God bless.
Hi, I am really new to networking computers together. I do build them myself, so I understand the terminology. I have several spare computers that I can set up for a render farm and I would like to know how difficult it would be. What would I need to connect them? Would it be better to use a dedicated network or use a wireless network that is setup for the house. I have a 6 core main system, a 4 core laptop and a probably single core desktop. I've been considering getting a switch and a network adapter for my main system ( the built in one is already used by the internet connection ) to do this. Any advise or suggestions etc would be greatly appreciated. I do already own Carrara pro and Poser 2012 to possibly use this. It could also be used with Messiah Studio.
Gus
First, you'll need a version of Carrara Pro, to create a render farm.
I've also read in the past that wired networks are better for network renders than wireless. I don't know if this was fixed in C8, or C8.5. Carrara will see nodes on a wireless network including version 7 (which is what I use), but if you have lost data or corrupted data it can stop the whole render cold.
For myself, I've had good luck with leaving the network settings in Carrara at their default.
My network consists of a wired/wireless router, five Apple Mac computers (three hardwired to the router), and a satellite modem. Two of the wired computers have a render node, and the other computer has the main application and acts as the host.
What kind of setup do you have to do on the other computers? Obviously, you have to put the render node on them and probably make sure they talk with the main system, but is there any setup on the render nodes that has to be done? When doing a render, is there any difference from just doing a simple, non-network render? I'll probably be doing mostly still images, which I hear won't make full use of the farm, but should help a little if there is only minor setup to use the network. You probably can't help much on Windows setup, You said you're on a Mac, but I'ld like to hear about the Carrara side of things.
Gus
I network various vintages of Macs. I have a PowerMac G4, and a PowerMac G5. They're both PowerPC chips. The G5 is 64 bit. I also have an Intel core 2 duo iMac. The G4 runs OSX 10.5, The G5 runs OS X 10.4.11 and also 10.5 depending on my mood. ;-) The iMac runs OS X 10.6. There's also a couple of Mac laptops and an iPad on the network, but I don't use the laptops as render nodes.
To render over a network, you need to enable the Network option in the Render room. You also need to render through the Batch Queue in the render room (at least as of C7.2 Pro). The other thing you need to do is have your main Carrara application running on your main machine before you launch the render node applications on the client machines. I've left Carrara's network settings at their defaults and have had no issues.
There have been enhancements to the network render options in the Render room in Carrara 8 and on. I only have C7.2 Pro, so some of what I told you may have changed.