Xgrid rendering

hoxolotl · Post by **hoxolotl** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 10:51 am

If any of you have been testing how to do network rendering using Xgrid it would be nice to see some feedback here

If you want to know how it's done here is a very nice tutorial by Andrew Kator:
http://www.atpm.com/10.06/blender.shtml

Although you might want to change the -f command with -a for an animation

Now to get to the tricky part:

Somehow it seems like the nodes on the network stop rendering after a while, after reconnecting them they start rendering again, I'm still looking into this.
Next tuesday we have a little LAN party and will try to break the 5GHz barrier (5 macs, should be easy), and see if the speed really improves, I'll get back to this thread as soon as I have some news.

anders_gud · Post by **anders_gud** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 12:00 pm

This is great!
I tried this at work with 16 G4 1 Ghz with OS X 10.2.8. It was easy to set up... I got around 10 to 15 Ghz speeds.

What I did to collect output was to mount a share in the Netinfo domain (in this case /Network/Library/blender_out) and directed the output from blender there. As the binary (blender.app) is distributed out to the clients all clients must run the same OS X version.
It also works with yafray, if you use the exported XML files from YableX as an argument list in Xgrid.

What I like to try is to render one frame across Xgrid with the new enableBorderRender() option, but I can't seem to get blender to render in the background with the -b AND -P options together (I get this "bad call to addqueue: 0 (18, 1) ... 595 Bus error" – is this a bug in blender on OS X?).

Anyway, being able to render animations this fast and in this easy manner is truly fantastic. Watch out Lightwave, Maya and XSI – here comes Blender!

cekuhnen · Post by **cekuhnen** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 1:15 pm

lol you dont think they might use render farms as well

sad that xgrid does not work on one mac with two cpus.

claas

anders_gud · Post by **anders_gud** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 12:54 pm

Have you ever tried setting up a LightWave renderfarm? I can tell you it's a pain in the ***

(at least on Mac's) That's why I'm so

, and this is free too...

dotblend · Post by **dotblend** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 10:21 pm

how about a wan party?

is it a option to try it accross the internet?

|

hoxolotl · Post by **hoxolotl** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 9:16 am

I know I'm reviving an old post, just updating the subject of x-grid rendering:
It's still possible with OSX-server and from what I've heard it works fine... If you don't have OSX-server edition there's a pain in the arse work around, and a little googling will get you there.

Still, would've been nice to have this feature in every apple computer instead of just the servers...

Of course soon Burp will be in beta, then everybody will be able to participate

http://burp.boinc.dk/

somazero · Post by **somazero** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 3:23 pm

The information from that site seems to be rather dated. As far as I know, there only seems to be a command line interface to submit jobs to an Xgrid. I think in Tiger, the did away with the plugin system. I could be wrong, but...

Anyhow, I've been messing with the xgrid command line client...I've tried to submit jobs like:

xgrid -job run -in /Applications/DarwinPorts/blender.app/Contents/MacOS -out ~/Desktop /Applications/DarwinPorts/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender -b /Users/steve/Desktop/Box-anim.blend -f 1

From what I can tell, this is very similar to how the plugin is setup, but it does it through the command line...

Anyway, that eventually returns with no results and this message...

-----

Using Python version 2.4
$HOME is NOT set
$HOME is NOT set
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
Unable to load: libtiff.
Try setting the BF_TIFF_LIB environment variable if you want this support.
Example: setenv BF_TIFF_LIB /usr/lib/libtiff.so
Loading /Users/steve/Desktop/Box-anim.blend failed: Unable to open

Blender quit
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]

------

Anyhow, if anyone knows of a link to a script or atleast a few tips, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

somazero · Post by **somazero** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 6:13 pm

Well, after looking for quite a while - I finally figured out how to use Blender with an Xgrid on MacOS X 10.4. If you're interested, please take a look at my howto at:

http://iwhir.net/?q=node/5

Let me know what you think...

Thanks!

notverypc · Post by **notverypc** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 4:52 pm

Hi somazero

I've followed your instructions but i'm getting the following the error:-

Code: Select all

Using Python version 2.3
$HOME is NOT set
$HOME is NOT set
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
dyld: image not found
Unable to load: libtiff.
Try setting the BF_TIFF_LIB environment variable if you want this support.
Example: setenv BF_TIFF_LIB /usr/lib/libtiff.so
Loading /Volumes/Blender/action_nla.blend failed: Unable to open

Blender quit

Any help would be very helpful.

czeky · Post by **czeky** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 1:52 am

using command line, blender renders okay, but when xgrid i'm getting this

powerbook:~ user$ xgrid -h powerbook.local -job run /Applications/blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender -b ~/test2.blend -f 1
Compiled with Python version 2.3.5.
Checking for installed Python... got it!
$HOME is NOT set
$HOME is NOT set
Loading /Users/czeky/test2.blend failed: Unable to open
ERROR: No camera

many thanx

Blender.org

Xgrid rendering

Xgrid rendering

Tiger...

I finally figured it out...

anyone lucky w Xgrid and Tiger?