NEED Help-I want to use my PC's as a render farm for my Mac

[Egg3D]

I have a bunch of old PC's collecting dust...LOL...and I want to build a small render farm for Maya and Mental Ray. Does anyone know the process to Network these together and then also build a file that allows Maya and Mental Ray to use the other PC's CPU power?

Thanks,
Ham

 

[spinnerlys]

Is there anymore information that you are willing to share with us?

What Mac do you use, what version of Mac OS X and Maya are on that, what kind of network do you have, ...?

Have you already looked at MRoogle or other search engines to come up with helpful information?

 

[Egg3D]

Hi, you bet...here you go...

Macbook Pro l7 dual Intel 2.66 running Snow Leopard

PC's run XP (think Pro)

Maya 2010

I haven't networked the PC's to my Mac. I have a wireless Belkin N+ with a WD 1TB Storage that my wife's PC Windows 7 shares.

I would either A) do an Ethernet Hub and connect directly for Speed or B) Wireless...if you thought it could be fast enough to help render times

The stuff on the Net I've found isn't simplistic enough for me...I do 3D...not a network guy


Thanks,
Ham

 

[Ka Ora!]

I have a bunch of old PC's collecting dust...LOL...and I want to build a small render farm for Maya and Mental Ray. Does anyone know the process to Network these together and then also build a file that allows Maya and Mental Ray to use the other PC's CPU power?

Thanks,
Ham

I would pose the question over at CGTalk in the Maya Rendering section. `Your going to have to get the machines sitting happy on a network. Install Maya on the slave machines, And there is a bunch of other jiggy pokey stuff to be done like installing backburner. I have not set one up.

But if you read the views on backburner they are not so good.