plugins over net

[themaxxer]

hello

I have some render nodes and I don't want to install all plugins on each machine... is there a way to install the plugins in a folder and share it over net to each machine? I know it's written in the help file from max, but I don't get this to work. does anybody has any experience?

thanks in advance

best regards
themaxxer

[DaForce]

It "should" just be a matter of modifying the plug.ini file of each machine to point to the network location of the plugins.
However having not tried it, thats a purely speculative comment.

[dgsantana]

Hi themaxxer,
i have made a little program that updates all render nodes.
It supports modifying the ini's and also let's it delete older plugins.
The zip as a example and there is a 3 command lines options:
-l for level of logging
-n for the "main" plugin node to process (e.g. max9x32 or max9x64)
-r for the render node to process

The machine where it's runned from is used has the "template" and should have all the plugins required. There is also a [include] statement that can be added to the plugin.ini to specify extra ini.
P.S. There is a problem i haven't solved that the order of the keys written plugin.ini is alphabetic i could cause problems if the plugins\vrayplugins is loaded before the main vray plugin.

http://www.4arq.net/stuff/PluginUpdater.zip

Best regards,
Daniel

[themaxxer]

Hi themaxxer,
i have made a little program that updates all render nodes.
It supports modifying the ini's and also let's it delete older plugins.
The zip as a example and there is a 3 command lines options:
-l for level of logging
-n for the "main" plugin node to process (e.g. max9x32 or max9x64)
-r for the render node to process

The machine where it's runned from is used has the "template" and should have all the plugins required. There is also a [include] statement that can be added to the plugin.ini to specify extra ini.
P.S. There is a problem i haven't solved that the order of the keys written plugin.ini is alphabetic i could cause problems if the plugins\vrayplugins is loaded before the main vray plugin.

http://www.4arq.net/stuff/PluginUpdater.zip

Best regards,
Daniel

thanks daniel

...but how does it work? I get ping errors. do I have to modify the xml file to my needs? must the program be started at windows start?

best regards
themaxxer

[dgsantana]

Yes you have to modify the xml to your needs. It will look complicated but after a while it will make sense. After the <root> node there is 4 childs, 3 are related the various max installations, you should delete the ones that don't apply to you and also add/remove your plugins to the list, a simple way for example is if you have all plugins only the root plugin dir remove everything in between the general node and add this:
<plugin id="all" description="All plugins" overwrite="ByDate">
<filter id="" path="plugins\>*.*</filter>
</plugin>
If you don't change any attribute of the general node it should get the right max dir.
Also you must change the list of "slaves" there is the list of computer names that should be updated.

If you any problem i can make you the xml if you tell the computer names and the plugin dir and what max versions need update.

P.S. the ping timeout are is because is trying to reach the computers from our network.

Best regards,
Daniel

[dimo]

Hi,
You can also change the plugin.ini to point to a network drive.
That's what we do right now. You just have to make sure that the server is not a normal Windows XP because of the connection limits XP has. We use a linux server for this.

Best regards,

Dieter