On a much lighter note... Weather was rainy this evening, so the trip out the to the "Signs" campus was scrubbed. Still... gotta take the kids somewhere, right ?? How about the computer store for a ride in the shopping cart? Mmm. Look at that. Bryce5. Whata-ya know. Only $80. So, after two-and-a-half years of Brycing, I've finally gone and upgraded to Bryce5. (hopefully that'll show up on the bottom line of some ones accounting sheet making it a good idea to keep the product going ;) ) Now.... to finally DL those B5 materials I've been missing out on......... Have fun! PS: Anyone here taking advantage of the network rendering features? Any tricks to know about? Setup issues? I've got two "spare" computers on a hub in addition to the "real" PC. It'd be nice to get the workflow moving along with the network rendering if it really works. Thanks!

Ive only heard good things about bryce lightning, if i ever get a network i'll defintly be using it:) hope to see some awesome B5 renders soon!

When doing a network render, make sure the most powerful computer is the host.

nope, the least powerful computer should be the host, if you are using the host to render. So much of the reources are taken in sending and recieving data that the host renders five times slower than normal, while the client machines run at full speed. Tested and proved time and again in my own experience.

You're correct mad, the slowest needs to be the server, as it sends out the packets of info to the others, turn on the "use host to render" and when it's done sending packets out to the fast sytems it will take a chunk and render it.

Aye, I disagree. I think the least powerful machine, if you have more than two that is, should NOT be used to render. It will affect your render times negatively. What will happen is that your slowest computer will end up on the last unfinished panel for days, when your other, faster machines could do that particular pane in less time. Unless they are relatively equal, do NOT use your slowest machine as "use host to render". Just my experience, based off of over 50 machine setups.

Oh man....Someone just Post the link to the best tutorial on the net for using Bryce Lightning....

Well I only know this from my own personal experience. I tried using my laptop and both of my other available machines. It was about 25% slower when the laptop was the host and about 20% slower when my second fastest machine was the host. So long as your most powerful computer is indeed capable of sending out massive amounts of packets without any slowdown whatsoever you shouldn't have a problem.

Also as a note the render has to be as an animation but you can do a zero frame animation. IOW when ready to network render you go to File/render animation and in the frames from/to you set it to frame zero and you will get a still frame (also render it out as a .bmp sequence)