Render on Network

The Render Animation command allows you to select whether to render the animation over a network or not. The Network Render, also known as Bryce Lightning, allows you to render over a network of two or more computers.

Rendering complex scenes and animations requires a significant amount of computational power. Using only one computer, a complex scene or animation can take many hours to render. You can take a number of steps to decrease the time required to render such a scene, such as reducing the complexity of the scene, reducing the quality of the render, or upgrading the computing power of the computer.

The Network Rendering feature in Bryce lets you spread a rendering job over multiple computers. This lets you reduce the amount of time required to render a complex scene without sacrificing the complexity of the scene or the quality of the final rendered image or animation.

This is accomplished by breaking a scene into smaller sections and sending each section to a separate computer to be rendered simultaneously. The more computers you have working on rendering a particular scene, the less time it takes to render the scene.

How Network Rendering Works

To use network rendering, you need two or more computers connected by a TCP/IP network. One of the machines acts as a server that controls the other machines, sending them sections to be rendered and reassembling all of the rendered sections into the final image or animation. The other machines act as client machines, receiving and rendering their sections of the image and then sending the rendered section back to the server.

When you render an animation over a network, by default, Bryce sends each frame of the animation to the client computers.

When you render a single frame over a network with the Tile Optimization option turned on, Bryce divides the frame into tiles and sends the tiles to the client computers.

The server is the only computer that needs to have Bryce installed; the other computers can have either a licensed copy of Bryce installed, or you can install Bryce Lightning, an application included with Bryce that is specifically designed for network rendering.

To start a network rendering session, you will need to know the IP addresses of each of the client machines you want to use. When you launch Bryce Lightning, it will display that information for you.

The next step is to open a scene on the server and select the network rendering option.

You will then need to configure the server by giving it the IP addresses of the client computers you will be using for rendering the scene.

To render over a network:

1. First, make sure that Bryce Lightning is installed on all the client machines.
2. Choose File > Render Animation from the menu or press Opt/Alt+Shift+R.
3. The Render Animation dialog will come up:
   
   
   
   By default, the Entire Duration is pre-selected but if you only want to render the Working Range, then select that instead.
4. The Start and End fields show the range of the animation to be rendered. You can change these manually to render only a particular frame or range of frames.
5. Click the triangle icon beside Output Module and select the type of output to render:
   
   
   
   Note: For an image (one frame), select Output Mode of BMP Sequence.
6. Click on Edit and adjust the type of compression to use.
7. Click on Set and choose the drive and folder where you want to save the file:
   
   
8. Type a filename and click on Save.
9. Click on Render to Network and click on the Configure button.
   
   
   
   The Network Render Settings dialog comes up.
   
   

1. Click on the Search button to have Bryce find the clients or enter the Client IP Address in the field and click on the Add button. If you have a firewall active, you may be asked whether to allow Bryce to access the network. Go ahead and let it. Please note that sometimes, Bryce will not be able find the clients so try again as needed.
1. Once the clients have been located, click on the Select All button or click on the buttons next to each client in the Client List that you want to participate in the render.
1. Click on the Update button to have Bryce check to see which clients are ready.
   
   The Client List either shows the IP address or the name of the client, if it is known to the system. All available clients get a Green Status. The client on which also the server runs sometimes shows as not being available (this is the case here). This can be ignored. Sometimes none of the clients turn up green. Ignore it for now and check back later.
   
   
   
   Note: For single picture network rendering, Use Tile Optimization must be enabled (this is the default).
1. Click on the OK icon to accept the settings and start the animation render.
1. The following image shows that the Network Render is in full swing. All clients are shown as busy including the one that showed as unreachable earlier.
   
   
1. Each render client will have a status dialog showing the status of the piece it is rendering.
   
   
1. To check on the render as a whole, choose File > Network Render Manager from the menu.
1. When the Render job is finished, all clients will show as Ready (green). After a few seconds, the Status will turn black with a white question mark.
   
   

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