Batch Rendering
Harmony Network has the possibility to render your scene locally or send it to a render farm so other computers can render your scenes while you continue working on your station. This option is not available with Harmony Stand Alone. The Harmony Network rendering processed are named:
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Local Rendering is done directly on the user machine using its CPU. To perform local rendering you must use Harmony Stage. |
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Batch Rendering lets you send a scene to render while you continue working in Harmony Stage. This way, you do not have to wait for the application to complete the render process. |
Batch rendering is a background process divided over several machines, or a render farm. Sending your scene to batch render will share the rendering load with other machines in the render farm and lessen the amount of work required by your computer.
The parameters for the format and file type to render are set in the Write modules contained in your scene's Network view. Before sending your scene to batch rendering, make sure to set the Write modules to export in the proper location, and set the format parameters. Note that you can have more than one Write modules in your scene if you require several exports—see Advanced Export.
Refer to the Control Center and Server Guide to learn how to send scenes to batch render and check the status of the Render queue.
How to send a scene to the batch rendering queue
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Save all the contents of your scene, all drawings, colour palettes and the palette list. |
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Select File > Save or press Ctrl + S (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + S (Mac OS X). |
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From the top menu, select File > Export > Render Network or press Ctrl + Shift + Y (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + Shift + Y (Mac OS X). |
If the system administrator did not complete the resolution configuration tasks, a warning message will open. This message notifies you that the resolution.conf file was not properly inserted in the configuration folder.
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Click OK to continue. You will still be able to render your scene. |
The Render Network dialog box opens.
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In the Range section, select the frames you want to render: |
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All Frames: Sends all the frames in the scene to be rendered. |
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Selected Frames: Sends a range of frames to be rendered. |
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Select the Batch Composite option. |
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Select the Chunk option if you want to split the frames into sets of frames or QuickTime movie into small chunks. Note that when the render farm (server) is done rendering all the small movie chunks, it will put them all back together to create one single movie file. |
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Enter the number of frames for each chunk in the Size (Frames) field. For example, if your scene is 100 frames long and you enter a value of 20, there would be five entries in the queue of 20 frames each. |
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Select the camera for rendering the scene's images from the Camera list. These are the Camera modules you created in your scene. |
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Select the Field Composite Options option to create a field composite to refine your selection. |
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Add Pull-down: Uses the 3:2 pull-down technique. |
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Automatic Combine: Combines even and odd fields on a scene's images. |
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Second Field First: Always starts with the second field before combining with the first. |
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Click OK to start the rendering process. |
A confirmation dialog box opens to inform you that the frames have been sent to the Render queue.
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If the selected frames were already sent to the Render queue, a notification dialog box opens to inform you that these frames were already in the queue, but that they have been updated with the latest rendering request. |
You can also send scenes to batch rendering and check the status of the rendering queue from the Control Center module.
