Here's a quick guide on how to use the SquidNet renderfarm at the University of Bolton, if you have any problem please post them to the SquidNet problems forum.
1. When you open SquidNet User Interface you'll be presented with an empty interface. To create your job, you first have to create a new project. So go to Project, then Project Manager.
2. You'll then get a dialogue box with different projects in. Click New Project and create a new project under your name, you'll then use this project directory for all your renders.
3. You will then see your Project Folder, form here you can edit current jobs or create a new job. To create a new render, click New Job.
4. By default it will be set up for 3DS Max, so change the template to Maya before you do anything else.
5. You then have to fill in the details for your project, you have to fill in the boxes with a red border, most of the others you can ignor if you project is set up correctly. Start by changing the Application to MAYA-2014-TEST, so it renders using 2014. Next set the Project Dir, navigate to \\crabbies\ then click project-dir. In here you will find a folder with you name on it, select this as your project directory. This is where your going to put your Maya projects for rendering. For your project to render properly, all your files need to be relatively referenced, and all the appropriate files need to be on the render drive. DO NOT just copy your whole Maya project as it will have useless things in it, such as temp renders and previous Maya Scene iterations, so just copy the parts you need. Talk to a tutor if you need help with this.
6. At the moment, the renderfarm is a bit unstable, so the render pools don't work, and not all machines render. To create manual render pools, click include/Exclude then select the machines you want to render one, like C101 or C203, and press the right arrow you use those machines.
7. The rest of the options are fairly simple. Changing the Scene/shot name will change the folder in the Project Folder the job goes into. The Job ID is the name of the job, no two jobs can have the same name, so make sure you have a good naming convention. You can add a colour and description if needs be. Check use all available cores so it fully utilises the machines it render on. Increase the slice fail before stop to the maximum (50), as not all the machines work at the moment so you need a big buffer. Also check Check output content, Frame check, and Create output folder. You can also check Skip Existing Frames if useful. You can change the priority of your project, third years have higher priority so use values 1-8, second years use values 9-16, and everyone else use 17-24. Your job attaches your username, so anyone misusing the farm will be dealt with. For the scene navigate to your Maya scene in the project folder. For starting and end frames put in the frames you wish to render. If you have to render lots of frames, 50+ increase the Frames Per slice, a slice is a group of frames that a computer will render, if you have lots of frames per slice, then it will render on fewer computers, but if you only have one frame per slice, the increased network traffic will make your render take longer, so you need to find a mid ground. A rough guide is to take the number of frames your rendering and divide by 25. Everything else you should leave alone unless you know what your doing.
8. To monitor the jobs, you can open multiple tabs to show the different elements. Here I have open, Job Queue, Farm Work Queue, Render Farm Nodes, and Project Folder. Job queue shows the jobs on the farm, Farm Work Queue shows the computer which are working on various jobs. The Render Farm Nodes shows the entire render farm, and Project Folder shows your projects. To organise them neatly click tile windows and it will lay them out.
9. If you double click on the job in the Job Queue window, you can see how the slices of the job our going. As I mentioned earlier, it's a bit unstable so some computer's will error very quickly, if the whole farm errors, then there is a problem with your project so you should cancel the job. To cancel a job, you have to use the machine you submitted it from, open the Job Queue, select the job and press remove. If your just some slices are erroring, then make a note of the machines that are doing it, and post it to the Render Error forum. You then press Requeue Error to requeue that slice.
Your projects should then be rendered to where ever to set in your Maya file. Any problems please post them on the Squidnet Problems forum.
