I've set up and administrated a number of farms over the years (doing it as I type. its.. what I do). One thing you really want to do, certainly with Maya's renderer, is to try to use the same OS and platform on your farm as you use on your user workstations. There can be subtle or even obvious differences in the render output between OS's, and since you'll have enough issues to deal with you'll want to keep cross-platform incompatabilities out of the mix. Please, trust me on this. Had to deal with Maya Irix/Win2k/Linux differences in the past.
As for queueing software, give Condor a look-see. Free and functional. I reverse-engineered a Perl version of it before they made their source available, and my version has been run quite successfully at several animation studios and an effects house over the years. It's a well architected system for distributed computing.
Feel free to contact me if you've got any other render system or management questions. I'm always interested in seeing how other studios approach the challenge.
Well, now..
The NViddy kiddies now officially rule the
high-end PC graphics market. And with PS2 going
'thud', next year they stand to also rule, with
M$FT, the console space with XBox.
This is disquieting at best. They are in a
position to not only stifle PC/console graphics
capability competition, but to start rolling out
new graphics tech at a rate best suited to their
financial gain (instead of as demanded by a state
of healthy competition).
I like NV, I like their cards, but this state
of affairs can only be bad for the consumer.
Of course, AI co-processors may well be the next
big thing in gaming. If NVid makes graphics less
interesting, there are other plcaes gamers can put
their money.
My $.03.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey
I've set up and administrated a number of farms over the years (doing it as I type. its.. what I do). One thing you really want to do, certainly with Maya's renderer, is to try to use the same OS and platform on your farm as you use on your user workstations. There can be subtle or even obvious differences in the render output between OS's, and since you'll have enough issues to deal with you'll want to keep cross-platform incompatabilities out of the mix. Please, trust me on this. Had to deal with Maya Irix/Win2k/Linux differences in the past.
As for queueing software, give Condor a look-see. Free and functional. I reverse-engineered a Perl version of it before they made their source available, and my version has been run quite successfully at several animation studios and an effects house over the years. It's a well architected system for distributed computing.
Feel free to contact me if you've got any other render system or management questions. I'm always interested in seeing how other studios approach the challenge.
Well, now.. The NViddy kiddies now officially rule the high-end PC graphics market. And with PS2 going 'thud', next year they stand to also rule, with M$FT, the console space with XBox. This is disquieting at best. They are in a position to not only stifle PC/console graphics capability competition, but to start rolling out new graphics tech at a rate best suited to their financial gain (instead of as demanded by a state of healthy competition). I like NV, I like their cards, but this state of affairs can only be bad for the consumer. Of course, AI co-processors may well be the next big thing in gaming. If NVid makes graphics less interesting, there are other plcaes gamers can put their money. My $.03.