Alpha 3 now available. Please upgrade to this version if you have been testing.

changes/features:

• ftp upload now "Passive" to help eliminate timeouts and make it more firewall friendly.
• System messages can be sent to individual slaves. If tray icon is flashing you have a new message
• lots of stuff behind the scenes for debugging purposes.

If you have a decent internet connect and would like to help us render on the TWO movie project

Still in the testing stages, but you can d/l and play with the new WebRender client.

http://wiki.hash.com/index.php/WebRender (Please read and follow setup instructions on this wiki page)


You don't need to have a current or installed TWO Svn data tree. The client will d/l the the required source files, render pending frames and then upload finished frames back to our servers for use in the movie.


Will


** Installer updated at 4:30PST if you grabbed it before, please reinstall. The previous installer had mixed versions. Check your about box it should say Alpha-3

A few strange things with this one:

1) The icon to start Render Messenger is blank.

2) When started, it downloads stuff, but it only show in the task bar at the bottom. Clicking on it doesn't bring up the window.
Could be a blip though. I'll test it again tomorrow.

3) It seems to have added winkiville and yoop castle to the data in this download. Those two sets wouldn't be needed together for one shot.

4) Right clicking on the yellow icon in the taskbar>close......still keeps the render slave program in the toolbar (the one I can't open) and it's still downloading away.....even though the yellow icon is gone. I have to right click>close on the render slave name.

5) It initally set threads to auto, but only displayed 1. Unchecking and re-checking it made it say 2 correctly.

At this time you probably want to keep your threads set to "1"

Will

Hi,

1) The missing icon is fixed now.

2) This non responsive is a threading issue, during the d/l the interface isn't get any time back to refresh the window. I hope to have a fix for this soon.

3) This is due to extra stuff saved in the project. It loads whatever is saved there.

4) same as #2

Thanks,
Will

Thanks for helping to test. With the extra people we have turned up several little things to get fixed.

For those of you who grabbed the Alpha 3 it was missing a small text file that is used to test the ftp connection
If you don't have a tips.txt located in your webrender folder you can create a text file with notepad or copy the one from your
regular master folder. The installer is updated and now contains this file

Due to packet changes you need Alpha 3 or higher. Adaam&Oliver, higgnsd, smwolke, NancyGormaezano, jzawacki, johl3d, agep you will need to update before you will be able to render.

Also make sure you "output path" has been set in the "Messenger Options" A few people missed that step in the wiki docs. I'll move this into the setup wizard in future installs.

Thanks,
Will

I have just installed alpha3 on both of our computers - mine did 2 frames and is now stopped at "Uploading Completed frame".

It's hard to know if it's hung or just listening for the next "frame" or there isn't any testing going on. How would I tell? Should I do anything or leave it alone as that's part of the testing?

I am also wondering if it would be possible to have some status message transmitted/posted whenever testing is going on, or is scheduled.

I hate to leave the computer(s) on overnight without them doing anything.

Will

Net redner is really slow to some of the renderings with Web render. Some have said 6 minutes a frame and I am doing the scene on the backside with net render and it took 2:30 hours per frame. Should I turn all my machines on with web render?

Steve

I'm assuming you are talking about the jzawacki machine, not jzawacki2 or 3? I upgraded 2 as well, just to be sure and still nothing is rendering. 3 is being reimaged and might not be back for a while.

What do you see on your side? Do they show up at all?

Edit: Ok, I just used jzawacki3 on a brand new Dell (just opened the box, nothing special) and it's idle as well. No errors on fresh install and start!

Works like a charm, about 20 minutes a frame, which is in line with what I expect with my computing power.
(Very cool little program - kinda weird to think of this giant internet render farm, if ya stop to think about it.)

I left both computers on last night - and it seems to me that they rendered a couple of frames and then quit.

This morning both said (right click the messenger icon) they were still connected to the render server. But both needed the messenger to be closed and restarted again in order to process any new frames.

This happened repeatedly on both machines, yesterday and last night.

BUT it is definitely a cool program (when it's going) - love how it does it's little thing all by itself. Better than having to run A:M and manually start up everything. This idiot loves it.

Yes, It quit after 3 frames; I assume testing is simply sporadic. I shall leave it connected and bike back to work.

I as well, I just hate wasting idle processors..

Though, restarting the messenger and it begin rendering again seems like a bug. I'm just happy it's not only me.

I also get a couple of frames and then a quit. I just thought Hash didn't need my computer any more.

yup mine did a couple frames and stopped as well...?