Network Rendering 17798

NETWORK RENDERING
for form Z by
INTRODUCTION
The goal of this tutorial is to show how we can work with the network rendering when using the Lightworks rendering engine under Form*Z.
You should read the NETWORK RENDERING section of the manual before this document.
I simply want to share my own experimentation so all the document is made from the example of my simple network.
I actually have two computers I want to participate to the farm.
Pentium 4 D930 3GHz 2gig of RAM

Name: “JEAN-LUC”
Description of the computer: “Station 1 Server”
IP address: 192.168.1.10
Pentium 4 D940 3GHz 2gig of RAM

Name: “MATTHIEU”
Description of the computer: “Station 1 Server”
IP address: 192.168.1.20
All IP addresses on my network are manually set for computers and peripherals
The work group for all is “BUREAU”
You should have a clean installation of all these components:
Installation of Form*Z on at less one computer

Installation of the RENDER CLIENT
Installation of the RENDER SERVER on the “controller”computer
All these installations have been made under a clean process for Windows XP.
(See my tutorial in the corresponding section of the forum.)
1 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

PORTS CONFIGURATION
The numbers for ports are assigned by the (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority “IANA”)
http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers
As we can see we have an interval between the followings numbers:
# 28241-29166 Unassigned
In our case we have three kinds of ports to configure:
1- Port for the RENDER SERVER

2- Ports for each RENDER CLIENT
3- Ports for USERS
You can use the automatic settings for some of these but I prefer manual settings so I can control exactly what I make and what my firewall do.
Summary:
1- RENDER SERVER PORT
Go to the “server configuration”dialog by using the “configure”button of the RENDER SERVER window.
Set it as 28838.
You should not change the default setting except if you get a conflict.

2- CLIENTS RENDER PORTS
Go to the server “client settings”dialog by using the “Settings”button of the RENDER CLIENT window.
Set them with numbers included in the interval seen above.

So I’ve chosen for my clients
JEAN-LUC = 28810
MATTHIEU = 28820
(as you can see the numbers of the ports are logically found from the IP address)
JEAN-LUC @ 192.168.1.10 port 28810
MATTHIEU @ 192.168.1.20 port 28820

3- USERS PORTS
I prefer use registered users to have the possibility of keeping the file on the server machine for several renders from the same scene, and for clarity in the
process.
In fact I’
ve two licenses so I can set the registered users as fellow
USER 1
Name = jlformz
Port = 28831
USER 2
Name = jlimager
Port = 28832
And I can reserve ports numbers for additional users in example:
USER 3
Name = matformz
Port = 28833
USER 4
Name = matimager
Port = 28834

For FormZ:
Go to “network settings”dialog by using the “settings”button of the “Network render Status”dialog.

To go to the “Network render Status”use the “Network render Status”item in the Display menu of the main interface of Form*Z
In my case I’
ve set the port as static to 28831
( the number is 288 + 3 (server series) +1 (first registered user))

So that return a number easy to memorize, I just have to remember that my Form*Z on the JEAN-LUC is the first user.
For the Imager (stand alone):
If you are using the Imager you have to access to the “network settings”dialog by using the “Network Render Status”button on the bottom of the Imager set and
the “settings button”of the “Network Render Status”thus opened.

In my case I’
ve set the port as static to 28832

FIREWALL
We have to open all of these ports on the active firewall.
I run the windows XP firewall so I can explain the procedure for all XP users.
Go to the Windows firewall from the configuration panel
You have to use the add port button on the “Exceptions page
The dialog for a new port is as:

In my case I have:
FZ RENDER CLIENT JL = 28810

FZ RENDER CLIENT MAT= 28820
FZ RENDER SERVER = 28838
JLformz REGISTERED USER = 28831

JLimager REGISTERED USER = 28832
For simplicity I open all of these ports on all machines on the local network.

HOW TO RENDER ?
CONFIGURATION FOR THE RENDER SERVER
Launch the render server on the “controller”computer
Click > “configure”button

Settings:
Port 28838 (default)
Check clients Every 9 seconds (minimum)
Disconnect Clients after 15 Missed Checks (minimum is 3 but 15 give a better stability)
Nb: the “Check clients”parameter could be increased to 200.

This should increase the performance but with less precision on the status of the Clients in the clients list of the server.
CONFIGURATION FOR THE RENDER CLIENTS
Launch the render clients on the each computer
Click > “Settings”button

1- Browse the network to add the server (as you can see the address show the port 28838 previously set)
2- No need to synchronize Time to Server for local machines
3- Set the PORT to static you can choose a port in the interval 28241-29166 as mentioned before. Here it’
s 28810 and it correspond to the IP address for simplicity.
Of course DO NOT USE the same number of the RENDER server (28838)
4- you can set the Client Strength to 50 ( I will explain this further)
Don’t forget that the “Remove Job Files”is use to delete the files placed on the local machine (where a client run)
On Win XP these files are localized here:
C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\My documents\formZ network client\files

RENDERING FROM FORM*Z
Select the “Network render”item from the display menu:
CLICK OK

PROCESS CHECKING
With three kinds of windows you can see how the rendering run:
1- NETWORK RENDER STATUS (opened from Form*Z or the Imager)

2- Form*z RENDER SERVER
3- All Form*z RENDER CLIENTS

DEBRIEFING THE LOG FILE
After the rendering process…
(You can also read the LOG file to understand in details during the process)
This log file is located on windows XP here:
C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\ Application Data\autodessys\formZ 6.1 Render Server
You access directly to it by the “LOG”button on the server window
As an example we can run a rendering from a sample file from Autodessys.

Here we took the chair file found in the sample. You can download it from the Autodessys website.

We have made some adjustments on the file:
1- set the image size to 1000 x 750 pixels (from Image options dialog)
2- Set one light with atmospheric light to slow the rendering.
(Here is the settings, output power 0.1, apply atmospheric light accurate overcast, light ble sky luminance 7 quality about 90%)
Here is the content of the LOG file:
[02/01/2007 | 19:25:09] Job 'chair-final view-9' added

[02/01/2007 | 19:25:09] Client 'MATTHIEU' rendering bands 0 - 15 of job 'chair-final view-9'
[02/01/2007 | 19:25:10] Client 'JEAN-LUC' rendering bands 16 - 29 of job 'chair-final view-9'
[02/01/2007 | 19:25:10] Client 'MATTHIEU' stopped working
[02/01/2007 | 19:25:10] Client 'JEAN-LUC' stopped working
We can see that the complete rendering need 29 bands
The client MATTHIEU takes the bands from 0 to 15
The client JEAN-LUC takes the bands from 16 to 29
If the strength of the tow clients wasn’
t 50/50 the division of the total number of bands could be different.
Clients are working
[02/01/2007 | 19:26:04] Bands 16 - 29 of job 'chair-final view-9' are rendered
Client JEAN-LUC has finished his work
END of the rendering
[02/01/2007 | 19:27:27] Job 'chair-final view-9' done

Client MATTHIEU has finished his work
END of the rendering
VERIFICATION OF THE RESULTS
By double click on the rendering line of the Job queue section of the RENDER SERVER window you can access to these two final dialogs:

As we can see this is not a very clean result because the total render the tow servers are not equalized.
JEAN-LUC = 39 seconds
MATTHIEU = 123 seconds
Total calculus time (be careful this is not the real time) = 162 s
THE RENDERING IS DONE AFTER 138 seconds (TOTAL RENDER TIME field in the job information dialog)
OPTIMIZATION
Let’
s go for a new test.
As we can see the main difficulty in the rendered image is in the upper part (70%)
So we can hope to get a better result if the client that renders this part is set to approximately to strength around 70 when the second is set to 30%
Of course it works because we have only two clients…
Here is the result:
LOG FILE:
[02/01/2007 | 19:13:15] Job 'chair-final view-8' added

As we can see first client render only the 12 first bands on 29, so around 40% (exactly 41.38)
and the second 17 bands on the bottom of the image, so around 60% (exactly 58.62)
Client MATTHIEU has finished his work
[02/01/2007 | 19:14:43] Job 'chair-final view-8' done
Client JEAN-LUC has finished his work
The rendering is done.

JEAN-LUC = 82 seconds
MATTHIEU = 84 seconds
Total calculus time (be careful this is not the real time) = 168 s
THE RENDERING IS DONE AFTER 88 seconds (TOTAL RENDER TIME field in the job information dialog)

Comparison of these results:
The times for the calculus are approximately the same: 162 seconds and 168 seconds.
But the first rendering is done in 138 seconds and the second in 88 seconds (difference 50 seconds)

TROUBLESHOOTING
Actually (form Z 6.1.0)

We have experimented:
a minor problem with the render server (as you can see on my last image the port for the clients are not correctly identified by the server
despite they are correctly manually set in the different clients.
Some files seem to get bad results.

It’
s the case for the “Dragonfly.fmz”render test file from Autodessys.
Here is the log file:
[02/01/2007 | 20:05:24] Job 'dragonfly-view 10-10' added

[02/01/2007 | 20:05:26] Client 'JEAN-LUC' rendering bands 0 - 89 of job 'dragonfly-view 10-10'
[02/01/2007 | 20:05:26] Client 'MATTHIEU' rendering bands 0 - 89 of job 'dragonfly-view 10-10'
[02/01/2007 | 20:10:55] Client 'JEAN-LUC' removed
[02/01/2007 | 20:17:45] Client 'MATTHIEU' removed
[02/01/2007 | 20:29:22] Client 'MATTHIEU' removed
… /…
The computers seem to proceed to an infinite work…

I don’t’think there is any “bands 36470580”for a still image (a frame from the animation).
It seems to be something wrong with the animation in this file…

Network Rendering 17798

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NETWORK RENDERING

I actually have two computers I want to participate to the farm.

Pentium 4 D930 3GHz 2gig of RAM

Pentium 4 D940 3GHz 2gig of RAM

You should have a clean installation of all these components:

Installation of Form*Z on at less one computer

1 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

As we can see we have an interval between the followings numbers:

In our case we have three kinds of ports to configure:

1- Port for the RENDER SERVER

1- RENDER SERVER PORT

2 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Set them with numbers included in the interval seen above.

3 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

And I can reserve ports numbers for additional users in example:

4 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Go to “network settings”dialog by using the “settings”button of the “Network render Status”dialog.

( the number is 288 + 3 (server series) +1 (first registered user))

For the Imager (stand alone):

5 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

6 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Go to the Windows firewall from the configuration panel

The dialog for a new port is as:

7 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

FZ RENDER CLIENT JL = 28810

FZ RENDER SERVER = 28838

JLformz REGISTERED USER = 28831

8 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Launch the render server on the “controller”computer

Click > “configure”button

9 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Nb: the “Check clients”parameter could be increased to 200.

CONFIGURATION FOR THE RENDER CLIENTS

Launch the render clients on the each computer

Click > “Settings”button

10 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

11 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Select the “Network render”item from the display menu:

12 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

1- NETWORK RENDER STATUS (opened from Form*Z or the Imager)

13 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

After the rendering process…

This log file is located on windows XP here:

C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\ Application Data\autodessys\formZ 6.1 Render Server

You access directly to it by the “LOG”button on the server window

As an example we can run a rendering from a sample file from Autodessys.

14 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Here is the content of the LOG file:

[02/01/2007 | 19:25:09] Job 'chair-final view-9' added

15 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

VERIFICATION OF THE RESULTS

16 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Of course it works because we have only two clients…

Here is the result:

[02/01/2007 | 19:13:15] Job 'chair-final view-8' added

17 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

18 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

19 By Jean-Luc DAUREIL 2 janvier 2007

Actually (form Z 6.1.0)

Some files seem to get bad results.

Here is the log file:

[02/01/2007 | 20:05:24] Job 'dragonfly-view 10-10' added

The computers seem to proceed to an infinite work…