How to build your own render farm using 3ds Max and backburner.

Straight away the title is somewhat misleading, because this is not designed as a cut and dry instruction, rather a suck it and see crib sheet that hopefully will allow you to avoid some of the hurdles and pitfalls that I encountered when setting this up. What you will need : A valid copy of 3d studio max and backburner Your current computer with a licensed copy of 3ds max installed on it, which will be referred to as the DEVELOPMENT MACHINE 1 or more computers that can run 3ds max that I will refer to as NODES

You do not require monitors, keyboards or mice with the node machines, just the base units themselves.

For 3dsmax 9 nodes must be at least 1.4Ghz with minimum half a gig of ram (512 meg) For 3dsmax 2008 2010 the nodes must be at least dual core, with minimum 2Gb ram An Installed minimum operating system XP with service pack 2 32 bit. 1 x 100Mbit switch / hub An Ethernet cable of at least Cat 5 for each machine you are using (including your work machine)

IMPORTANT You MUST be using Exactly the same version of 3ds max and backburner on your Development machine and Nodes. Backburner will NOT work properly if you do not retain uniformity across the board!

For the purposes of this document I will be installing 3ds max 9 on all machines, Which are running XP + service pack 2. Other operating systems and versions of Max will probably differ slightly from this model.

Designing your render farm. The more machines you use, the more you will need to consider the following :

Space where to put the machines, how to arrange them ? Power consumption how much electricity will they consume ? Cooling how do you prevent the machines from overheating ? Running cost. how much is it going to cost me in electricity to run ?

If you are only using 1 extra machine as a node, the above points are not going to be an issue, but for multiple node setups, below is an example of how my render farm is physically set up.

19 x 1.7 Ghz nodes with 512meg of ram, running XP sp2 and Max 9 / backburner.+ service pack 2 for max 9 1 x quad core 2.4 development machine with 4Gbytes ram running 32 bit Vista and max 9 / backburner.+ service pack 2 for max 9 1 x 1.7 Ghz dedicated server with shared drive containing all the library files and source files.

The nodes are racked on rails (to allow airflow for cooling) along one side of my garage. see pictures below.. You can make any kind of racking system, but you need to be aware that they will get very warm, so leave a reasonable airspace between the units.

To calculate your running costs, check with your electricity supplier for your unit cost . A unit is 1 kilowatt of electricity usage over a 1 hour period. Each of my nodes has a capacity of 250 watts, which combined can use up to 5 kilowatts of electricity every hour. In the UK, my supplier charges 9.4 pence per unit, so if all nodes run at full power, they will cost me about 50p an hour to run. Worth considering, if you intend to render out some large time consuming jobs. I have connected all my nodes together with Cat 5 UTP straight wired, stranded Ethernet cables, through a 100mbit 24 port switch. I have a dedicated machine setup with home server, that houses my library files, maps, textures, scripts and plugins. The same machine also holds the output destination for finished renders. NOTE If your render farm numbers more than 10 nodes, you will have trouble networking them as a workgroup. There are some well documented ways around this issue, published on the internet, , but the best method is to setup one machine as a dedicated server and create a domain name, rather than a workgroup and add all the nodes to your created domain. You will require a valid copy of windows server and some basic knowledge of Active Directory to do this

Render farm design diagram

Setting up the Nodes to use backburner.

There are documented instructions on the internet for installing and configuring backburner. Although these documents are pretty good, they miss out some vital information, which I will try to include below. Network the nodes Decide upon a naming convention for your machines, and a workgroup name. e.g. node1, node2, node3 node 12 and for the development and server, something like Dev1 and Server1 Your workgroup name could be workgroup or renderfarm or something like that.. Install XP and at least XP service pack 2 on each node. When prompted to setup an initial user, make the user name the same name as the node name.. eg.. node1. You MUST give the user a password. Keep the password the same for all the users on all nodes. If prompted, do NOT make the documents private. ON all the nodes - from control panel open up user accounts and create a user called remote give this the password password and make sure it is an administrator. If prompted, do NOT make the documents private. Change the computer name on each node, following your own naming convention. Ensure that no two names are the same. For XP users From the start button, click control panel, select system and on the popup window, select the computer name tag. Click on the change button and type in the unique name of the computer. On the same screen, ensure that you have Workgroup selected from the member of part of the rollout, and give it the workgroup name you have chosen. Click Ok , and reboot the machine. See below

The next few steps are required if you are using base units without keyboards, monitors or mice, so that when they are powered on, will automatically login and run the backburner server service, and allow for remote desktop administration from your development machine or server. Enable Remote Desktop Click HERE and follow the instructions on each node to enable remote desktop When you want to remotely login to the Nodes, login using username remote and the password. Set each node to automatically login when powered on Click HERE and follow the instructions on each node to enable automatic login when the machine is powered on. You need to set up auto login with the default username (node name) and associated password, NOT the remote user.!! Automatically run the backburner service on startup On each node, login, from the start button go to all programs, autodesk, backburner. You will have three possible applications to choose from. Server Manager Monitor Hover your mouse cursor over server and right click, then copy Go back to your start button and go to all programs - Startup (double click on this to open the box) This can be a little tricky, you have to actually double click on the word startup in the menu itself. A window will open. Right click and paste the server application into this window. This will invoke the Server service to run automatically each time the node starts up and auto logs in. Installing Max 9 on the nodes. install the full version of max on each node, and backburner. I have tried to install just backburner and also a compact installation of 3ds max, but encountered problems very quickly. There is no requirement to re-license your copy of max on each node. A single 3ds max license allows you to run max via backburner on up to 9999 nodes. The only machine that requires the 3ds max license is your development machine. ( Backburner only exploits the rendering elements of 3ds max and not the development tool itself. If you attempt to run the full unlicensed version of max 9 on a node, it will prompt for registration.) Download and run service pack 2 for max 9 on every machine that has 3ds max and backburner installed and the backburner service pack. Including the development machine This is particularly important if you are using mixed operating systems, as I am. Click HERE to go to the service packs. your version of 3ds Max. Ensure that you run the correct service packs for

Setting up the server as a share for all your nodes. For backburner to work, all nodes and the development machine need to source all their max files, textures, materials, plugins and scripts from the SAME place. In order to do this, you need to choose an area on any machine and share it. I have setup one of my computers as a dedicated server which houses all associated 3ds max files, including maps, textures, plug ins, scripts and anything else that might be used.

1. Create a folder on your share computer and create all the subfolders under it where you
will store your files. ( I would simply copy your 3ds max resource folders from your development machine ) - see below for an example..

2. Right-click the folder that you want to share, and then click Sharing and Security to view
additional settings.

3. Remote access is turned off by default. Click the Security warning message then select
Just enable file sharing, and click OK.

4. Now you can share data. Click Share this folder on the network, and then type a share
name. You can use this name later to access the data. The share name and the folder name do not have to be the same. (But it helps!)

5. Tick both boxes under network sharing and security, and give the share a name. Click Apply.

6. The icon for the shared folder appears with a picture of a hand. The folder is now shared.

Connect your nodes to the shared folder

There are two ways to connect to the shared folder, Map a drive and UNC connections. I will show you how to do both. 1. Map a network drive to the share

This operation must be carried out on all the nodes, and the development machine. NOTE the drive letter MUST be the same on all machines! Open up windows explorer and click on tools. Select Map Network Drive

Choose a drive letter (same for all machines) and in folder field type the path to the share. Start with \\ then the computer name where the share is contained, then another \ then the share name itself. Eg \\Server\Sharename (Ensure that Reconnect at logon has a tick in it) Click Finish.

All nodes and the development machine will now connect to the share upon start up.

NOTE When using the mapped drive method, you must always power the share machine up fully first, so that the nodes and the development machine can see the share when they power up.

2. Using UNC (Universal Naming Convention) to connect to the share Using UNC is more efficient, in that it does not rely on mapping a drive to establish a connection, and would mean, you can power the machines on in any order, rather than the share machine first. Setting Backburner up to see the shared files via UNC is not straight forward and demands a certain level of technical knowledge. I would only set max to use UNC if you are confident enough to go messing with the max system files.

For those that are happy to do so, the instructions to setup a UNC connection to the share are contained HERE

Network ready to use.

OK, if the sun is shining on you, the network should now be up and running. Test the interconnectivity by pinging random nodes from your development machine. To do this, on your development machine, go start, run and type CMD, {hit enter.} A black screen with a white cursor should appear. Click on the black box and type ping {node name} and hit return e.g. ping node1 You should see something like this on the screen

Repeat the command for each node on the network. If you get the following screen when testing the connection to any node, then either the computer isnt booted up / setup correctly or there is a problem with the network connection. Check the cables are connected properly and that the node is fully booted up.

Using Backburner for the first time If the gods favour the colour of your underwear, your network will now be fully functional and ready to use. All nodes should now be booted up, logged in, and running the backburner server service. They will all be mapped using the same drive letter, or UNC to the shared folder, as will your development machine.

This is important! ALL machines need to use the same connection to the share. If you are using a mapped drive, ensure that the drive letter is the same for all machines, including your development machine. If you are using UNC, then all machines including your development machine must all use UNC. Rule number 1 EVERY PLUGIN, TEXTURE, MAP, SCRIPT OR OTHER ELEMENT USED IN YOUR MAX SCENE MUST COME FROM THE SHARE!! Most of the problems I encountered at the beginning where down to the share not being accessed properly, or I was using maps, textures or plug ins on a scene that were not held on the share. Backburner really doesnt like this and will throw its rattle out of the pram and refuse to work. YOU ARE NOW READY TO ROLL I was going to include instructions on how to use backburner, but here are some really good tutorials that explain everything very clearly. Tutorial 1 Tutorial 2 Video Tutorial 1 Additional Help for techies or really brave individuals. Extra tutorial for bucket rendering with Mental Ray If you intend to clone workstations be aware If you clone a machine that has a registered copy of max installed, you will get license errors on all the cloned machines on the network and max will not work, even with backburner. To get round this, leave max unlicensed on the slaves before you clone. As stated above, your node copies of max do not need to be registered to run backburner. Cloning Windows is never foolproof. You are copying the same licence across multiple machines and unless you have a corporate licence for the OS, this is illegal. The machines will require SYSPREP following the clone, and a valid windows License key for each individual node. If you do have corporate windows and clone the nodes, be aware that the windows SID will be identical on all cloned nodes and strange things have been known to happen on networks with this setup. I would recommend resetting the SID individually following cloning. Tools are available on the net for free download that can do this. Cloning backburner will also clone the backburner XML file. Prior to cloning a machine, ensure that the backburner server is not running, then navigate to :C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Backburner\Network directory and delete backburner.xml. Backburner will recreate this file upon the first execution of backburner server and populate it with machine specific details like node name and MAC address. If anyone is still having difficulty with their render farm, please email me Phil_Gornall@dsl.pipex.com I only check my email a couple of times a week, but I will respond .. eventually.. Good LUCK!! -- click HERE