About the Farm
The Yale School of Architecture's Render Farm is built around both a group of extremely fast multi-processor dedicated render servers and the high-end workstations in the teaching labs, the latter of which have been configured to render only when a user is not logged in. This setup enables us to both have a solid dedicated render farm available at all times, and to more efficiently harness the power of idle lab machines.
Rendering using the farm is typically much faster than using your own workstation, as it breaks your image into pieces--or your animation into frames--and renders each piece on a different machine (or a different CPU on our multi-CPU render servers). The faster rendering time and the fact that you don't have to tie up your own machine with a render are great benefits; but using the render farm does require some knowledge about the rendering options available and a small bit of setup.
Our render farm is managed by Deadline, a flexible and easy-to-use software package developed by the special effects company Frantic Films. Using Deadline, we are able to render 3ds Max, Maxwell, and Maya images and animations directly through a single submission application, the Deadline Monitor. But before doing any rendering, you will need to do some initial setup.

Set up your Input and Output folders on arch-render
Before doing any rendering, you first need to set up your input and output folders on the shared render farm drive. The shared drive is \\arch-render\renderfarm and can be accessed by typing that address in a Windows Explorer window, or by browsing to it through My Computer; \\arch-render\renderfarm is mapped to the R drive on student and lab workstations.
On arch-render, create folders with your name in the following locations:

\\arch-render\RenderFarm\Input
\\arch-render\RenderFarm\Output

You will be copying the files to be rendered into your Input folder, and the completed renders will be saved in your Output folder. Please keep in mind, the folders on arch-render are not backed up, and older files will often be deleted to free up space. Once your render job is complete, copy the rendered files to your user space as soon as possible to avoid losing them.

Launch Deadline Monitor
In the Deadline Monitor application, you can monitor the progress of your render job and the render slaves and suspend your job if necessary. Deadline Monitor is already installed on your workstation: you'll find it in Start > Programs > Rendering > Deadline > Deadline Monitor.
When you first launch Deadline Monitor, you'll be asked to choose a user account to use, or to create your own. If you wish to create your own account so that you can be notified by email regarding your renders, use your net ID as the user name and enter your email address. Otherwise, use the generic students account.

Begin Rendering
Once you've created folders for yourself in the Input and Output directories, you're ready to start rendering. Follow the links below or to the right for further instructions, depending on what you're rendering.

Rendering 3ds Max
Rendering Maxwell
Rendering Maya
Monitoring your render job

If you have any questions, find errors in any of the tutorials, or would like to add helpful links to these pages, please contact the DM Office.