A 3Delight Collective allows you to render a single image, including through IPR, faster by using several computers from your network. It is selected through the 3Delight Preferences. But to select and render with a 3Delight Collective, it must first be defined. This is done by providing a list of computers/servers and giving it a name. You can in fact define more than one collective. Here is an example of 5 collectives that can be defined in a large studio:
Rack-1 — All the servers located in rack number 1.
Rack-2 — All the servers located in rack number 2.
Lighter-A — A group of servers you want to dedicate to lighter A.
Lighter-B — A group of servers you want to dedicate fo lighter B.
All-servers — All the servers.
The 3Delight Collective is defined through a simple JSON file. Here is such a file for the above example which makes it self explanatory:
{"Rack-1" : [ "server01,24", "server02,24", "server03,24", "server04,24", "server05,24" ],"Rack-2" : [ "server06,24", "server07,24", "server08,24", "server09,24", "server10,24" ],"Lighter-A" : [ "server01,24", "server02,24", "server03,96" ],"Lighter-B" : [ "server04,24", "server05,24", "server06,96" ],"ALL-servers" : [ "server01,24", "server02,24", "server03,24", "server04,24", "server05,24", "server06,24", "server07,24", "server08,24", "server09,24", "server10,24" ]} |
With this file, which can be saved wherever you want as part of your installation, all you have to do is point to it in the 3delight.config configuration file by adding that line:
collective ~/projects/MyCollective.json
With this information, the 3Delight Collective option will be available in the Preferences dialog of 3Delight Display and accompanied with an option menu to select which collective to use:
Additional Notes
- A server/computer can be part of one or more collectives. As is the case in the example above.
- With each server/computer name, you can specify a number of cores, eg "server01,32". This limits the number of cores that will be used when rendering when using this computer from the collective. If the number is not specified, eg "server01", then all the cores will be used.