3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [504]
FIGURE 48.12
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.
Using the Monitor
The Monitor is a powerful utility that helps you manage your rendering farm and all the jobs in it. If you use network rendering frequently, then the Monitor quickly becomes your best friend. You start it the same way that you start a rendering server or manager: Go to the 3dsmax directory, find QueueManager.exe, and double-click it. Every computer that has Max installed on it also has a copy of the Monitor, so you can use it from any machine on your network. The main screen is shown in Figure 48.13.
FIGURE 48.13
The Monitor makes managing a rendering farm quick and easy.
When the Monitor starts up, it automatically searches for the rendering manager and connects to it. (If you have more than one manager running, you have to choose which one to connect to.)
The main screen is divided into three panes. The top-left pane shows the job queue and their Priority and Status, and the top-right pane shows information about whatever you have selected in the left pane. You can use the tabs at the top of this pane to select the information that you want to view. The information tabs include Job Summary, Frames Summary, Advanced (which shows the rendering parameters), Render Elements, and Log.
The bottom pane lists all the available servers. Next to each server in the left pane is an icon that reflects its current status. Green icons mean that the job or server is active and hard at work. Yellow means the server is idle. Red means that something has gone wrong, and gray means that a job has been inactivated or that a server is assigned to a job but is absent. When a job is complete, it can be deleted from the queue.
Jobs
If you choose a job in the top-left pane, the top-right pane displays information about the selected job. The panels in the top-right pane are as follows:
• Job Summary: Lists some of the rendering options you chose before you submitted the job. Among other things, the example in the figure shows that the job was rendered to 640 × 480 pixels.
• Frames Summary: Lists the details of rendering each frame in the animation, including the time required to render and the server used.
• Advanced: Lists advanced settings from the Render Scene dialog box and gives limited information about the scene itself.
• Render Elements: Lists the details of each render element included as part of the job.
• Log: Displays important messages from the job log. Whereas the log file on each server lists events for a particular server, this pane lets you see all the messages relating to a particular job.
When you point at a job in the top-left pane and right-click, a small pop-up menu appears. On this menu, you can delete a job from the queue or you can choose to activate or deactivate it. If you deactivate a job, all the servers working on that job save their work in progress to disk and then move on to the next job in the queue. This feature is very useful when you have a lower-priority job that you run when