Q100104: How to set up Nuke with a render farm

SUMMARY

This article describes the general process involved in setting up Nuke to work with a render farm.

MORE INFORMATION

There are 3 main steps to setting up a render farm for Nuke.


1. Installing Nuke on the render machines

Installing Nuke for render machines is the same as installing it on workstations - it's the same program as the Nuke GUI just run in a different mode. You could run the interactive installer on each machine or you can install it remotely and/or silently from a Terminal or Command Prompt.  Instructions on how to do this are available in the Nuke User Guide at the following links:

Installing Nuke on Windows
Installing Nuke on OSX
Installing Nuke on Linux


2. Point the render machines to the license server

The next step is to point the render machines to your license server where your nuke_r licences are floating from.  You can either do this by creating client license files or by setting an environment variable called 'foundry_LICENSE' and setting it to 4101@serverName where 'serverName' is the hostname or IP address of your license server.

 

Please see Q100264: How to point a machine to your RLM license server for more information.

For more information about floating licenses and our server tools, please see the FLT User Guide which is available from the following page:
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/support/licensing/tools/


3. Integrate Nuke with your render farm software.

Rendering a Nuke script is just a command line operation so Nuke can easily used with a wide variety of render management software.  The exact steps to set this up will vary between render programs so please consult your chosen render farm software user guide for more information.  There are also various scripts and tutorials on the Nukepedia community site which Nuke users have created

http://www.nukepedia.com/

NukeStudio has its own render farm functionality in the Frame Server scripts which can be used to distribute rendering across your network.  Please see the Nuke User Guide for more information:
http://help.thefoundry.co.uk/nuke/#comp_environment/rendering/render_farms_studio.html

 

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Keywords: Nuke, render farm, renderfarm