Blender render farm for OS X in background

Hi, I want to set up a render farm at our College to run on any machine in the background with minimal installation and setup.

It looks like the built in render farm to blender is only acceptable on smaller scales where all machines are logged in, and have blender open and running. This isn't the right solution for me.

A while back I set up a render farm for Maya using OS X Qmaster. This runs in the background without anyone logged in, receives jobs and executes command line arguments. A network share is mounted on all machines running it. Looks like Qmaster isn't set up correctly on Mavericks, also might be some compatibility issues for it too. Looks like you can set up with command line:

sudo SystemStarter start Qmaster

qmasterprefs -list

Current settings:

 -sharingType servicesAndQuickCluster

 -launchContentAgent off

Bus error: 10

qmasterprefs -cluster on servername "test1"

Bus error: 10

I'm getting "Bus Error: 10" every time I run any commands

I also setup Blender to render over Xgrid, but Apple has pulled this out of the new servers so I'll give this a miss for now.

Farmerjoe render farm, looks alright. Need to install Perl I think.

DrQueue looks interesting, but you do need to compile it first.

Backburner is more promising, as we can also use it for Maya and any autodesk app. Found an article here which almost proves it. So here's my attempt a few years ago to get it working. I tried once more but couldn't get the web monitor working, might be because I've got the server app installed? Or it's mavericks? I shall continue with this.

Deploying Maya 2012 and Backburner

So, I want to set up a nice little render farm, and so need all machines to have the software on. First things first, deployment.

I had a look at the Maya install dmg and found that the initial application is not a pkg file. But fortunately, inside the package contents:
/Volumes/Maya/Install\ Maya\ 2012.app/Contents/Resources/Maya....

• Maya2012.mpkg
• Additional Items
• ADC_docs6.0.pkg
• AdLM_standalone.mpkg
• AutodeskBackburner2012.mpkg
• AutodeskDirectConnect6.0.pkg
• AutodeskUninstaller.pkg
• Composite2012.pkg
• CraftDirectorStudioMaya2012.dmg
• Maya_quicktime_components.pkg
• autodesk.backburner.monitor-2012.0_423_i386.pkg
• autodesk.webentry-1.0-603.i386.pkg
• backburner-2012.0_1560_i386.pkg
• dmmPluginForMaya2012x64.pkg

All I did was to highlight all these files and have Apple Remote Desktop install them for me, minus "CraftDirectorStudioMaya2012.dmg" which I am don't think I need.

On going to the computer I tested this process on, I found that a user was already logged on and a message saying:
a certain process needed "Rosetta" installing should I do so?

I clicked yes and forgot to read which Application it was. Looking in the logs I found:
20/04/2012 11:44:06 com.apple.coreservices.uiagent[1050] 11:44:06CoreServicesUIAgent[1050] : Application failed to launch (id = aksusbd, version = Unknown reason = kLSNoRosettaEnvironmentErr)

It was this "aksusbd" which needed it.

I also found in the logs that the install process tries to start backburner and comes up with the same error message I came up with here:
/usr/discreet/backburner/backburner: line 64: syntax error: unexpected end of file


I can fix this simply by copying the fixed version of the backburner file. 


just found this update for backburner. Found on this page

OS X Maya 2012 and Backburner

So, I'm getting up and running with Maya and I want to eventually use as many machines as possible to render from (I have about 100 machines, 4 of which are super-duper!). So where to start. Well, just found the Maya documentation and found the specific Backburner very small section on Page 175.

One interesting bit is about where to say which machine is the "Manager". This is in the folder:
/usr/discreet/backburner/cfg


Looking here you find most of Backburner including a link to the Documentation:
http://download.autodesk.com/us/systemdocs/pdf/backburner2011_user_guide.pdf


note: can't find backburner 2012 documentation!


So, reading backburner 2011 user guide pg.77 to start, stop and restart backburner in terminal type:

sudo /usr/discreet/backburner/backburner stop
sudo /usr/discreet/backburner/backburner startsudo /usr/discreet/backburner/backburner restart

I initially had a problem. Whenever I ran backburner it would come up with:


/usr/discreet/backburner/backburner: line 64: syntax error: unexpected end of file

Couldn't find any mention of it on Google. I had a look at the file and couldn't find anything wrong with it. Seems to just contain a list of 'if' statements. On line 64 it is concerned with 'stop'ping the service:

if [ "$1" == "stop" ]; then

   ${DL_BACKBURNERDIR}/backburner_server stop

   ${DL_BACKBURNERDIR}/backburner_manager stop

fi

I simply swapped these to lines and saved and it didn't come up with the error any more? There must have been an incorrect carriage return.

Anyway, carrying on, you need to stop the manager in order to edit the configuration. Configuration file is:
/usr/discreet/backburner/Network/backburner.xml

Details on what some of it means is in backburner2011 user guide page.81.

It looks quite good anyway, only two things I'm concerned about:

1. the subnet mask to use
1. unfortunately, my machine is on one subnet, and the rest of the macs are on another!
2. what to name the manager
1. currently is set to 'localhost'
2. shall I rename it?

Now for the webserver.

Default username and password are:

backburner

backburner

pg.78 and 79 describe how to manage users.

to check the server and manager are running type the following and you should get some results:

n250-04524:Network leachs$ ps -ef | grep backburner

    0  1573     1   0   0:00.05 ??         0:00.08 /usr/discreet/backburner/backburnerManager

    0  1590     1   0   0:00.00 ??         0:00.00 /bin/sh /usr/discreet/backburner/backburner_server run

    0  1602 1590 0 0:00.02 ?? 0:00.03 /usr/discreet/backburner/backburnerServer -m localhost

Next, you need to make sure that the manager name is in the:
/usr/discreet/backburner/cfg/manager.host

It is currently 'localhost'.

Well, took about 5 mins but finally found where to get to backburner webpage!:

http://localhost/backburner/

Not documented ANYWHERE!!!

Well, it's a good start. I shall set the machine next to me as a server node.

Well, been quite unsuccessful at the moment. Can't seem to get:

1. the web monitor to register the name of the manager
2. any servers to connect to the manager

just found this update for backburner. Found on this page

OS X Maya command line rendering with ssh

So, we have a lot of Apple Macs here, some very, very nice Mac Pro's. I have previously attempted to set up a render farm through X-Grid, which is managed through a Mac OS X Server.

I've just found Autodesk's Backburner is now available for mac, but I think it might not have an Administrator GUI for OS X, just Windows? I'll look into it. Anyway, found this little video on how to get a mac client working with backburner(submitting a job and using it as a render node)

But my original purpose in making this post was to catalogue how I'm going to use the command line to render (until I get backburner up and running).

So, I've installed Maya 2012 on a nice fast machine (not mine) and I want to render a job on this nice machine. So I open up terminal and type:

ssh 123.456.7.89
password....

. /Applications/Autodesk/maya2012/Maya.app/Contents/bin/MayaENV.sh

render /path/to/file.mb

The ". /Applications/Autodesk/maya2012/Maya.app/Contents/bin/MayaENV.sh" line loads up Maya Terminal.

It renders whatever you have set up in the file. i.e. I set up for it to render one frame from perspective camera at 1080p resolution on Production Quality to: /path/to/maya/project/folder/images/.

You can add more information via the 'render' command. Type:

render -h

to get a very long list of arguments for the render command.