Network Parallel Rendering

Pixie supports network parallel rendering where bunch of computers work on a single frame. Through this document, I'll use ``client'' as the computer that's dispatching the rendering job. This is usually the computer that you are working on. I'll use ``server'' for the computers that actually do the rendering. So for a given ``rib'' file, multiple servers work for a single client. For a computer to work as a server, a network rendering deamon has to be running on it. You can spawn a network rendering deamon on a computer by  

rndr -d <port> 

To render a rib file on the net, you can use:  

rndr -s <server1:port1,server2:port2,...> <rib\_file>

 Where  <server:port> is an address descriptor for the server. The address of a server is displayed when you start the deamon. All the external files (rib, sdr, [dll/so], tif etc.) that the server can not find on the local computer will be downloaded from the client computer to a temporary folder (default:  temp). At the end of rendering, the contents of the default folder is deleted. It is important that the directory that you launch the deamon is writable for this purpose. You also want this directory to be a local one.