3ds Max® 2008 Bible

Chapter 47. Batch and Network Rendering

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Setting up batch rendering

• Using network rendering

• Meeting network requirements

• Setting up a network rendering system

• Rendering on a network

• Using network rendering servers

• Logging errors

• Using the Monitor

• Event notification

Max can help you create some incredible images and animations, but that power comes at a significant price—time. Modeling scenes and animation sequences takes enough time on its own, but after you're finished, you still have to wait for the rendering to take place, which for a final rendering at the highest detail settings can literally take days. Because the time rendering takes is directly proportional to the amount of processing power you have access to, Max lets you use network rendering to add more hardware to the equation and speed up those painfully slow jobs.

This chapter shows you how to set up Max to distribute the rendering workload across an entire network of computers, helping you finish big rendering jobs in record time.

Batch Rendering Scenes

If you work all day modeling, texturing, and animating sequences only to find that most of your day is shot waiting for a sequence to be rendered, then happily you have several solutions. You can get a second system and use it for rendering while you work on the first system, or you can use the network rendering feature to render over the network, but a third possibility is also available.

Unless you are working around the clock (which is common for many game productions), ...