User manual

© Next Limit Technologies 2010
Maxwell Render 2.5 User Manual
Chapter 11. The Network System | 84
11 THE NETWORK SYSTEM
11.01 The Network System
The network rendering system was created to distribute the rendering process among
various CPUs to reduce render times.
The Maxwell Render network system offers a solid and stable performance and is easy to
set up.
The network system allows you to:
1. Launch a cooperative render with several machines working together to render the
same image. The contributions of the machines are merged in a single image.
2. Launch a non-cooperative render queue, distributing the scenes among the available
CPUs, but every CPU renders an independent image. Each machine works on its own
frames.
3. Launch an animation, distributing the frames among the CPUs in the farm to get the
whole frame range.
The network system (mxnetwork.exe or mxnetwork.app in Mac or mxnetwork in Linux) is
composed of three components:
1. The Manager: distributes the jobs between the available render nodes. It also merges
the images in a cooperative render.
2. The Render Nodes: the computers that actually render the frames.
3. The Monitor: Interface that allows you to add jobs, assign jobs to nodes, stop a
network render, display info about the current job and show a merged preview of a
network render in progress.