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The Options section has the following settings:

Enable Notifications: Lets you tell Max when to notify you that certain events have occurred. If you check the Enable Notifications option, the Define button becomes active. The Define button opens a Notifications dialog box, shown in Figure 45-13.

Figure 45-13: The Notifications dialog box lets you specify which type of notifications to receive.

Split Scan Lines: This option breaks a rendered image into strips that can be rendered separately. The Define button lets you specify the Strip Height, Number of Strips, and any Overlap.

Use All Servers: This option makes all servers listed in the Server panel fair game for rendering. To select only specific servers, disable this option and select the servers to use.

Rendered Frame Window: Use this option if you want to be able to see the image on the server as it gets rendered.

Ignore Scene Path: Use this option to force the servers to retrieve the scene file via TCP/IP. If disabled, the manager copies the scene file to the server.

Initially Suspended: This option pauses the rendering before it starts so that you can manually start it when the network is ready.

Use Alternate Map Path: This option lets you specify an alternate map path, which is entered in the field below.

Include Maps: Checking this box makes Max compress everything that it needs to render the scene (including the maps) into a single file and send it to each server. This option is useful if you’re setting up a rendering farm over the Internet, although it does take more time and network bandwidth to send all that extra information.

Configuring the Network Manager and Servers

You can configure both the manager and servers using their respective General Properties dialog boxes. You open these dialog boxes by choosing Edit General Settings.

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The network manager settings

The rendering manager has some options that let you modify how it behaves. You specify these options in the Network Manager General Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 45-14. To open this dialog box, select Edit General Settings in the Manager window.

Figure 45-14: The backburner Manager General

Properties dialog box

This dialog box includes the following sections:

TCP/IP: Here you can change the communications ports used by the manager and the servers. In general, leaving these alone is a good idea. If some other program is using one of these ports, however, Max won’t be able to render via the network, so you need to change them. If you change the Server Port number, be sure to change it to the same number on all your rendering servers. If you change the Manager Port number, you also need to change two files on your hard drive to match: queueman.ini (in your 3dsmax directory) and client.ini (in your 3dsmax\network directory). Both have lines for the Manager Port, and you can edit these files with any text editor or word processor.

General: The Max Concurrent Assignments field is used to specify how many jobs the rendering manager sends out at a time. If you make this number too high, the manager might send out jobs faster than the servers can handle them. The default value here is fine for most cases.

Note The network manager can automatically attempt to restart servers that failed, giving your rendering farm much more stability.

Failed Servers: Usually, Max doesn’t send more frames to a server that previously failed. If you check the Restarts Failed Servers box, Max tries to give the server another

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chance. The Number of Retries field tells Max how many times it should try to restart a server before giving up on the particular server for good, and the Minutes Between Retries field tells Max the number of minutes it should wait before trying to give the failing server another job.

The rendering manager writes the configuration settings to a file on the disk that gets read when the manager loads. If you make changes to any of the settings, shutting down the manager and starting it up again to guarantee that the changes take effect is best.

Direct Access to Jobs Path: This setting lets you specify a different path that exists anywhere on the network, regardless of where the manager is running. There are separate fields for Win32 paths and Unix paths. If the Use Jobs Path option is selected, then the specified path is used.

Default Job Handling: This section lets you tell the Manager what to do once the rendering job is finished. The options include Do Nothing, Delete or Archive, and Delete or Archive after a specified number of days. This option gives you a way to clean out your queue.

Both the Direct Access to Jobs Path and the Default Job Handling sections are new to 3ds max 6.

The network servers settings

As you may have guessed, the Properties button on the Network Server window serves a similar purpose as the one on the Network Manager window: It enables you to specify the behavior of the network server. Clicking this button displays the backburner Server General Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 45-15.

Figure 45-15: The backburner Server

General Properties dialog box

This dialog box has the following section:

TCP/IP: The port numbers serve the same function as they do for the rendering manager, described in the previous section. If you change them in the manager properties, change them here. If you change them here, change them in the manager properties.

Note The Manager Name or IP Address setting lets you override automatic detection of the rendering manager and specify its exact location on the network. Generally, letting Max attempt to find the manager itself is best; if it fails, override the automatic detection by clearing the

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Automatic check box. If you happen to be running multiple managers on the same network, the servers connect to the first one they find. In this case, you have to manually choose the correct server.

Keep in mind that the server properties aren’t shared among your servers, so if you want something to change on all your servers, you have to make that change on each machine.

Note As with the rendering manager settings, if you change anything in the Network Servers Properties dialog box, be sure to shut down the server and restart it.

Logging Errors

Both the Network Manager and Network Server windows have a Logging button that you can click to access the Logging Properties dialog box, where you can configure how log information gets handled. This dialog box, shown in Figure 45-16, looks the same for managers and servers. You can access this dialog box with the Edit Log Settings command.

Figure 45-16: The logging options for managers and servers let you tell Max where to report what.

Max generates the following types of messages:

Error: Anything that goes wrong and is serious enough to halt the rendering of a frame.

Warning: A problem that Max can still work around. If a server fails, for example,

a warning is generated, but Max continues the rendering job by using other servers.

Info: A general information message, such as notification that a job has arrived or that a frame is complete.

Debug: A lower-level message that provides information to help debug problems with the rendering farm.

Debug Extended: The same as the Debug option with more details.

Max displays the type of message and the message itself in two locations: in the list window and in a log file (in your 3dsmax\network directory). The Logging Properties dialog box lets you choose whether each type of message gets reported to the screen, the log file, both places, or neither place. You can also use the Clear buttons to get rid of old messages.