CompuServe Messages

Robert, My network rendering setup consists of a WFW server, and 4 slaves running WFW Add-On for MS-DOS (allows DOS machines to be clients to a windows machine). We also have a PAR on the server. We've come across a lot of problems in doing network rendering – mostly with strange behavior from the slaves… As far as rendering to the PAR drive over the network – you can't do it. Everyone told us to get NDUMP – to let us do this. The problem with NDUMP is that it only will output the frames to the PAR drive SINCE THE LAST FRAME THAT THE SERVER HAS RENDERED. Therefore, let's say you have a 300 frame animation… Your server is up to frame 100 and the other machines are rendering away… when the server finishes with 100, NDUMP will gather sequentially frames 0-100 and output them to the PAR. "Great." – "Ya, well…" IF, in the meantime, the other slaves finish the process frames (101-300) – THOSE FRAMES WILL NEVER GET TO THE PAR, because the server now thinks the process is done, and doesn't pick up another frame… see the problem? I've written my own DOS batch file that fixes this, and we've sent back our copy of NDUMP. With the way that it is, I can't afford the chance of losing a bunch of frames every night I render. The extra time to copy them over in the morning is a pain. That's why we tried NDUMP in the first place… Oh well, maybe an update is coming… -Glen