Part 1: Network and User Setup | Part 2: V-Ray Installation | Part 3: Distributed Rendering | Part 4: Backburner

Tutorial by Morné Erasmus

Part 4 - Backburner

OK so what is the story with Backburner? What is the difference? Well in my experience you should use DR for still images and BackBurner for animations. Backburner can also help you render still images through "strip rendering" but I've never had a need for it and DR will handle all your still needs perfectly. DR is an integrated feature of V-Ray and has nothing to do with Backburner. Backburner is an Autodesk program that installs by default when you install 3ds Max and has nothing to do with V-Ray.

Providing you have installed everything with default settings, and only have changed your network settings in the lines of what was described in this tutorial, then getting BackBurner to work is really no big deal. If you navigate to "Start" > "Programs" > "Autodesk" > "Backburner", you will see that there are 3 components to choose from namely "Manager", "Monitor" and "Server". You can set "Manager" and "Server" to run in the background as a service similar to what we did earlier with "V-Ray license server" and also "Spawner", but to be different this time we will just run it straight from the Start Menu.

Decide which computer you want to be "Manager". In a nutshell the "Manager" will receive the render job, and send it to all the "Server"s. I've decided to make the "Manager" run on "Slave1". You should designate only 1 computer to be "Manager". Simply run "Start" > "Programs" > "Autodesk" > "Backburner" > "Manager" on "Slave1". Now on all computers including "Slave1", also run "Start" > "Programs" > "Autodesk" > "Backburner" > "Server". The "Server"s will actually render the job. On "Slave1" in the "Manager" window you will see that the various "Server"s will have "Successful Registration" as you run "Server" on each computer. In turn on each computer in the "Server" window you will see that it was looking for a "Manager" and then "Registration" to an IP address was accepted. The IP address you see here is the IP address of your "Manager", which was automatically picked up (might be a different address than the one shown in the image below).

Image 20: Backburner Server connecting to the Manager.

Now you can run the "Monitor" on any computer, but I recommend loading it on "MainPC1" just because you work on this computer mainly and you want to see what is happening with the renders. So on "MainPC1", go ahead and run "Start" > "Programs" > "Autodesk" > "Backburner" > "Monitor". The "Monitor" window opens but there is no useful information available. You need to connect the "Monitor" to the "Manager". In the "Monitor" window click the "Manager" menu and select "Connect". Make sure "Automatic Search" is ticked. Note: You can also untick "Automatic Search" and enter "MainPC1" if the automatic search fails to connect.

Image 21: Typical connection settings for manager.

Click "OK". At the bottom all your "Server" slaves will be listed. We're ready to submit an animation job. On "MainPC1" in 3ds Max hit "F10" to open the "Render Setup" window. In the "Settings" tab, un-tick V-Ray's "Distributed rendering". Each computer will render it's own frames of the animation, so we don't need DR now. Back on the "Common" tab, specify your render size, range of the animation etc. Scroll down a bit to the "Render Output" section and click on "Files…". Make sure you specify a UNC location on "\\MainPC1\Work\" so you know all the computers will have access to save their respective frames here. You can specify a filename like "\\MainPC1\Work\aniframe 0000.tga" and as the animation render progress it will automatically assign frame numbers to the end of the filename. Now just a little below that make sure "Net Render" is also ticked. Save your Max file. It is always a good idea to save your Max file before a render. Now you can "Render". A new window comes up with "Job Name" automatically having "tutscene" (the name of your scene) as the name. You can change the name here if you wish. It is just for the "Manager" to allocate and keep track of things. Below that click on "Connect" to connect to the "Manager". Once connected your slaves are listed on the right under "All Servers". The green dots shows they are online. You can leave all the other default settings and click "Submit".

Image 22: Backburner Job assignment.

Once you submit the job, Max starts running in slave mode on all BackBurner "Server"s and starts to render. The "Manager" assigns frames respectively to the 1st available "Server"s. You might find that depending on your scene size, a "Server" gets assigned 1 frame at a time or even 10 frames at a time, The next "Server" get assigned the next 10 frames etc. Rendering animation in this way with BackBurner will render most animations quicker than rendering frame by frame with DR. The nice thing about it is that you can submit many jobs in sequence, and the "Manager" will queue them. As soon as one job is finished the next will automatically start without you having to wait for that moment to submit the next job. With the "Monitor" you can also pause a job, or change the priority of a job that is down the list. Spend some time exploring the magnitude of information that is now in the "Monitor" window, which wasn't there before you submitted the job.

While rendering you will notice that it seems like you have 2 sessions of Max open at the same time on "MainPC1" That is because you submitted the render with the Max you were busy working with, and then the "Server" launched it's own slave mode of Max to render. If you like you can now close the Max you used to submit the job, but it is not necessary. The BackBurner render won't be influenced either way, except if you need lots of ram for a particular scene. If you get some frames that render strangely or darker than others, the problems could be resolved in the same way as explained with DR.

Now for some final notes on V-Ray rendering in general, DR and also Backburner. To help you troubleshoot missing files and path issues, there is a setting in V-Ray you can check. Hit "F10" to bring up the "Render Setup" window. In the "Settings" tab scroll all the way to the bottom and in the "V-Ray:: System" rollout under "Miscellaneous options" be sure and tick "Check for missing files". This setting will warn you when you try and render with missing files.

Image 23: Making sure V-Ray checks for missing files before rendering a network job.

If after troubleshooting all the scenarios in this tutorial you still have issues, then get your system administrator to take a look at your firewall settings to ensure all software components can talk to each other on the network, and that the various user permission are set correctly.

Thank you for following this basic tutorial. Now go and render some award winning masterpieces!