Thierry’s Technical Tutorials

First, you need to ensure that Backburner is installed. It will normally be found in your start menu programs, inside the Autodesk folder.

Backburner comes in 3 parts; the server, the manager, and the monitor.

Server

Backburner server starts 3ds max to perform render jobs. This can be run on as many machines as you like, allowing jobs to be distributed over a network.

Manger

Backburner manager receives jobs from your 3ds max session, and stores them. It will then hand these jobs out to the servers as needed.

Monitor

Backburner monitor connects to a manager, and allows you to view the jobs that are queued up on a manager. From here, you can suspend, resume, and delete jobs.

Using Backburner

First you need to start the manager. Start Backburner Manager. When you start it for the first time, it will present you with a settings dialog that allows you to select
the network port that you want Backburner to use. Leave this, the defaults are usually fine.

Now, you need to start a server. The server needs to connect to a manager so that it can request jobs to do. The first time you start the server on a computer it
will present you with a configuration dialog, on which you will need to enter some settings. The Server name or IP should contain the name of your computer. This
may already be filled in for you. In the Enter Manager Name or IP box, enter the name of the machine on which the manager runs. If you are running the manager
and server on the same computer, enter localhost here. Otherwise, find out the name or IP of the manager machine and enter it.

Start the monitor so that you can see what the system is up to. The monitor window will start blank. You need to connect to a manager so that you can monitor it.
Click the connect button (the left most button on the toolbar) and enter the name / IP of the manager (localhost if on the same computer) in the dialog that comes up.

Submitting jobs to Backburner

Render jobs are submitted to Backburner from 3ds max. Set your render up as normal, with all the usual settings (file output, lighting, etc). In the file output section
there is a check box called Net Render. Check it. Now click the Render button. Rather that starting the render, as normal, the Net Render dialog will appear.
The Job Name should be unique; if there is another job in the queue with the same name, the render system will complain. Under Enter Subnet Mask, uncheck
the Automatic Search check box. The box above changes to Enter Manager name or IP. Enter the name/IP of the manager here. Click the Connect button.
The jobs in the managers’ queue will appear in the lower right pane of the dialog box. Find the Initially Suspended check box in the Options section. This will
ensure that the job will not start immediately. Doing this is a good idea, as often you will only be using one machine, and having a job start on the machine immediately
will slow the machine down due to consuming its resources; making it more difficult to load more max files and submit more jobs. Now click Submit button at the bottom.
The job will now be submitted to the manager.
Repeat this process for each job.

Starting the jobs from the monitor

Switch to the Backburner monitor. That jobs that you have submitted will have appeared in the top left pane of the monitor window. They will have yellow icons, which
indicates that they are suspended. Select these jobs, and click the green light bulb button in the toolbar (the resume job button) to start the jobs off.

Suspending and resuming

Jobs and be suspended and resumed from the monitor using the suspend job and resume job toolbar buttons, at any time. This allows you to pause and resume

/>jobs quickly, with very little work, in case you need to interrupt rendering, so that you can make use of your machine.

Render errors

Render errors are the bane of Backburner. Any errors, including missing textures, and warnings about objects not having UVW maps will cause the job to fail in
Backburner, meaning that you won’t get any results. Before submitting jobs to Backburner, attempt a test render from Max in the normal fashion, to check that there
are no errors.
If you are giving models to other people, please ensure that they do not cause these render errors, as they will frustrate your colleagues efforts should they want to use
Backburner.

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