PhotoWorks question

[Mitsu50]

Hi all,

Is it possible to somehow get Solidworks and Photoworks to use a "RenderFarm", and link multiple machines to render an animation? i know 3ds Max and other Animation program can so this. Any thoughts? thanks in advance!

 

[rockguy]

This is not currently possible. It has been submitted by myself and others as an enhancement request numerous times. You should submit one also. If enough people ask it will be implimented.

Rob Rodriguez CSWP

http://www.robrodriguez.com

SW 2006 SP 2.0EV

 

[Stoker]

Yes this can be done. When you save the animation to a file you can select a time range under the "Frame Information" box. Just open your assembly on multiple machines (it will be read-only on the other machines but this doesn't matter) and save out a different time range on each machine(1-30 secs on machine #1, 30-60 secs on machine #2 etc. In this way you get simultaneous processing of an animation on multiple machines.

 

[Stoker]

It should be obvious that you will have to stitch the animations together to use this technique. If you are running XP then you can use the standard MS Windows software to do this.

 

[rockguy]

NICE. Didn't know this was possible with animations. You learn something new everyday. Network rendering is not possible when processing PhotoWorks renderings only though.

Rob Rodriguez CSWP

http://www.robrodriguez.com

SW 2006 SP 2.0EV

 

[Mitsu50]

cool thatnks for the suggestions. I'll give it a try!

 

[solidmecman]

great idea, how long does it take some of you to render an animation?

 

[metophile]

60 hours usually obviously depending on complexity and number of frames.

I have used this technique in earlier versions of SolidWorks where you had less control over the render able time frame. There was a command to reverse the animation so I set up two computers, on rendering forward and one rendering backward. Another thing you will find is that saving directly to .avi can be quite annoying. If, for instance your render crashes, the whole avi is destroyed. You can save the animation out as a series of numbered .bmp frames, this way even if the render crashes you will still be able to start back up right where the system went down. There are a lot of applications that can take these image files and convert them to a video file. QuickTime Pro, Flash, and 3Ds Max are some, I am sure there are other open source ones as well.

 

[solidmecman]

60 hours WOW! how long are these .avi animation clips? you rendering at full quality?

 

[metophile]

Well at 120 seconds with 24 fps, that is 2880 frames, they only have to take 1 and a bit minutes each for the render to take 60 hours. GI was not available at that point so I was just using the basic Indirect Illumination for images of about 768 lines.