3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [505]
One last useful feature for jobs is that you can reorder them by dragging a job above or below other jobs. Jobs higher on the screen are rendered before lower ones, which enables you to “bump up” the priority of a particular job without having to deactivate other ones.
Note
A file with a Critical priority is rendered immediately. •
Servers
If you right-click a server and select Properties from the pop-up menu, the Server Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 48.14, opens. This dialog box contains information about the selected server.
FIGURE 48.14
The Server Properties dialog box displays information about the server.
Many other features are available in the right-click pop-up menu. Using this pop-up menu, you can assign the server to a selected job, remove the server from its selected job, display specific server information, create a server group, or view the Week Schedule, as shown in Figure 48.15. Using the Week Schedule dialog box, you can set the active rendering period for a server.
The Week Schedule dialog box lets you decide when a particular machine is available for rendering. (For example, you can have your coworker's computer automatically become available for rendering after he or she goes home for the night.)
Click and drag with your mouse over different hours to select a group of times. Alternatively, you can click a day of the week to select the entire day or click a time to select that time for every day. In the example shown in Figure 48.15, the server is scheduled to render in the evenings and on the weekends.
After you've selected a group of times, click Allow to make the server available for rendering during that time or click Disallow to prevent rendering. When you're finished, click OK to close the Server Properties dialog box and return to the Monitor dialog box.
FIGURE 48.15
The Week Schedule dialog box can set the time during the week when a server is available for rendering.
If you have several jobs going at once but suddenly need to get one finished quickly, you can take servers off one job and put them on another. To remove a server, right-click its name in the left pane of the Monitor dialog box and choose Delete Server (Ctrl+Enter) from the pop-up menu. The icon next to the server turns black, indicating that it has been unassigned. To assign this server to another job, right-click the server name in the list of servers for the job you want to assign it to, and choose Assign to Selected Jobs.
Summary
If your goal is to spend more time modeling and less time waiting for rendering jobs to complete, then the network rendering services provided by 3ds Max can help you take a step in the right direction. After the initial complexities of setting up a rendering farm are out of the way, network rendering can be a great asset in helping you reach important deadlines, and it lets you enjoy your finished work sooner. Even if you can afford to add only one or two computers to your current setup, you'll see a tremendous increase in productivity—an increase that you can't truly appreciate until you've completed a job in a fraction of the time it used to take!
In this chapter, you accomplished the following:
• Used the Batch Render window to create a batch render queue
• Used the rendering manager and servers to carry out rendering jobs
• Used the Monitor to control job priority
• Made Max notify you when problems occur or when jobs finish
• Performed batch rendering even if you don't have a network
Chapter 49: Compositing with Render Elements and the Video Post Interface
IN THIS CHAPTER
Learning about post-processing
Compositing with Photoshop,
Premiere, and After Effects
Introducing Composite
Using render elements
Using the Video Post interface
Working with sequences
Understanding the various filter types
Adding and editing events
Specifying event ranges
Using the