Network Rendering

Bryce is able to perform a render of single images or sequences on different machines.
I wanted to check this features because there are plenty of unused PCs in this house.

So I got all PCs that seemed to be able to help me and set them up as network rendering clients.

Here's what I got:

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ primary machine AMD Duron 800 MHz PIII 800 MHz

Combined Power: ~ 3,7 GHz

Current Config:


The result:

Project Single Machine Network Render Tunnel 22 min 13 min

If you ever want to try network rendering remember this rule:
Quantity is NOT quality

I first had my primary machine, 2x 800 MHz machines and a 450 MHz and a 333 MHz.
This was slower than running the primary and the 2x 800 MHz.

The problem is that the fast machines have finished their parts of the file
while the slow machines are still rendering.
That delay slows down the whole process.

Example ("Tunnel"):

Config Render Time 2600 MHz 22 min 2600 MHz + 800 MHz + 800 MHz + 450 MHz + 333 MHz 18 min 2600 MHz + 800 MHz + 800 MHz 13 min

Old Config: