Apple Shake Distributed Rendering (10.2) - Manual

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Shake Distributed Rendering
Setup Guide
This document takes you through the basic steps involved in the creation of two different
sample setups for Shake distributed rendering with Shake Qmaster. You can use it to get an
idea of the kind of distributed rendering environment you want to create, and as a guide in
setting up that environment.
The setup that resembles the kind of network you need depends on how much rendering
power you want, and the kind of hardware you have:
m “Sample Setup for Part-Time Rendering on Desktop Computers” (page 3): This setup is for
an environment that uses desktop computers. We call it “part-time” rendering because each
computer acts as someone’s workstation, but at the same time is also part of the rendering
cluster. The bulk of the rendering jobs can be submitted with Shake Qmaster at the end of
the day, so that the computers are busy processing a large queue of distributed rendering
batches after everyone has gone home.
m “Sample Setup for a Full-Time Render Farm” (page 6): This setup is for an environment
that includes one Xserve and a number of Xserve cluster nodes in a rack. The Xserve and
cluster nodes form a Shake Qmaster cluster that is completely dedicated to rendering jobs
sent by user workstations (called
client computers). The client computers do not have to
do any of the rendering, and they can all be used for creating and sending Shake jobs.
Use this guide as a supplement to the Shake documentation and the Shake Qmaster User’s
Manual (accessible from the Help menu in Shake Qmaster and Shake Qadministrator). The
Shake documentation and the Shake Qmaster User’s Manual give you both the background
concepts and the details involved in using Shake and Shake Qmaster, while this document
helps you set up and use the network environment on which they will run.
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