[Beowulf] Re: noob understanding

[SIM DOG]

G'day all

A couple of points to add (being a 3DCG *and* Cluster monkey ;)

Sorry RGB but you shouldn't mention 'production quality' and POVray in 
the same sentence. While POVray is great for what it is (and what it 
costs!) It falls a long way short of what's expected for production. 
Ummm... by way of analogy, it's like comparing Doze against Linux as a 
cluster OS ;)

AutoDesk (makers of 3DS,Max etc) recently bought Alias Wavefront - the 
makers of the undisputed king of 3D apps: Maya. (Yes, I'm a Maya Man) 
The Maya community continues to hold its collective breath but the 
feeling seems to be that AutoDesk is hopefully smart enough not to mess 
with Pete (WETA) and George (that other mob ;)

AW has strong SGI/*NIX roots. Just look at the way the interface is 
truly just a GUI to the underlying 'objects'. This is what makes MEL so 
powerful. (OK, I'll stop the ad :)

Could be worth checking Phil, but at one stage I thought you could kick 
Max up in "I'm a render only node"? You can then run your scheduling app 
into the pool of render nodes. Maybe not... it's been a while since I 
looked at 3DS/Max. Still, you're still up for a license :/

Might be worth a sniff around 3DHighend etc to see if anyone's got any 
tips too. There were a couple of cheap/shareware render engines around 
for 3DS/Max a few of years ago. Sorry, but not for the life of me can I 
remember the name... the tute in a mag was a yellow room with a blue 
door... :/ Good grief, I'm getting old...

Cheers
Stevo