working from two locations?

[skogskalle]

Hello everyone,

I have an office where my workstation and renderslaves are, and now I would like to be able to work just as efficiently from home as well. Would really like som input on this since there are alot of different ways of doing this, (like buying a second workstation for home and having all the files on a server in the office, OR moving the current projectfiles back and forth on an external drive, OR working on a crappy laptop from home over some kind of vpn tunnel, Or buying a laptop awsome enough to use as my main workstation and carry that one back and forth... etc etc. Im sure there are more setups, and im sure all have their pros and cons.

I bet some of you work both from home and from your offices, and i would really appreciate some thoughts on this.

thanks in advance!
/k

[vlado]

Lately I find myself using either Remote Desktop through VPN, or Logmein to connect to my workstation at work; this way I don't have to move files or laptops around - I can pick up my work exactly from where I left it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[skogskalle]

thanks Vlado!
yup, if this works well it seems to be the most elegant solution.... Ive never tried vpn (or logmein), is it just like working on the workstation or will there be a slight delay or lag? (could be very annoing when working with graphics) Do you need a really fast internetconnection or is that not so important? (im currently using wireless connection at home so the speeds arent that amazing, could probably use a cable if I need to though)

[joconnell]

I find that go to my pc was neeearly fast enough to do very simple 3d through. If you had a heavy scene though you might not get fine enough mouse control / screen update to make it viable. Logmein free is great for checking renders and hamachi is great for pulling down files and getting a remove vray license but I still prefer just having another drive that's set up with the same folders and letters as my work computer. A lot of it for me depends on how portable my 3d is with large scenes and background images.

[skogskalle]

thanks,

so how does it work? vpn or "log me in" I mean. I thought the idea was that only an image of the workstations screen was sent over the network, and that the actual 3d-work was done on the workstation alone, so then it shouldnt matter if the 3d-scene is heavy or uses big textures etc - or am I missing something? If it affects mouse control then its really not an option...

[joconnell]

Nope you're totally right it is indeed just a 2d image of the desktop going across. I find with high resolution screens that you do get a bit of screen lag though. I'm on logmein free right now and when it updates the screen (1600 x 1200) it's doing so on a tiled basis - almost like each image of the desktop is bucket rendering. It's updating at the rate of about 2fps so for example you couldn't judge animation or render movies on it. Gotomypc was by far the best I found in terms of smoothness of interaction but since I was only using it for my own sanity checking renders and transferring files back and forth, logmein free was fine for all that. I'm not sure what way you work so it might be totally fine for what you do but I personally didn't find it good enough to be a home desktop replacement. In terms of texture size that was more so working across vpns - if you've got the upload speed to transfer files across then fine, I've personally only got about 1.5 megs upload which isn't very nippy for large sequences so the old fashioned sneakernet (e.g. a drive and your feet) still comes into play a lot.

Personally I'm on hd res vfx stuff most of the time so it's big scenes and big exr renders so it's less feasible for myself - your mileage may vary!

[vlado]

Yeah, it definitely doesn't work for watching movies, but since I connect through VPN anyway, I can just view the file locally on my machine. I wouldn't use it for extensive viewport work either - I'd usually just start 3ds Max locally.

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

do you think the new graphic technology Microsoft just rolled out change this? It is supposed allow the local graphic card to manage graphics and not the remote one you are connect to.

[skogskalle]

Sounds interesting Bobby - do you have a link to some more info?

2 fps and "tiled basis" doesnt sound too sexy... its not enough to get a good flow modelling (or doing photoshopwork for that matter). I do archviz, so its mainly viewport work in max and post in ps for me.

What about using a laptop as the main workstation? Would probably cost a fortune to buy one good enough, but compared to having 2 workstations and the hassle with "sneakernet" (lol) it might be worth it? My current workstation is just an old quadcore q6600 so compared to that a new laptop would still be alot faster...

[skogskalle]

ehrm well i just configured a Dell laptop on their site that had (almost) everything i want in a new workstation and lets just say it was reeaally expensive. And the processor, an i7, was just at 1.86 Ghz.... dont think this would be an option either. Guess Ill probably buy a new workstation for the office and keep the old one at home for now, and get a good and reliable external drive that mirrors my fileserver or something.

A couple of questions:

1. If there would be problems with paths and missing textures/assets etc, I guess i can copy all relevant files for a project to the same folder as the max-file. This works for textures if im not mistaken, but does it work for vray proxies too? (so if vray cant find the path/proxy specified in the proxy object, it looks in the local folder?)

2. What about cloud computing and all that. I dont really know anything about it except you keep all programs and files on a servers somewhere and work remotely. Does this work better than applications like logmein or does it come with the same drawbacks like slow screen update? And also, how pricey is this, is it only for big corporations with too much money still or are there good alternatives for small business?

[joconnell]

It's definitely not good enough for photoshop - your mouse input isn't being sampled often enough to give you smooth lines in your painting - it'll look angular and steppy. As regards moving files, the Save as > Archive command should take all the linked proxies. I think keeping a similarly set up folder structure is well worth it though. I'm personally going to get a dell xps studio laptop for about €1400 which has a decent amount of ram and a hd screen which should be viable enough for most things aside from heavy scenes.

[Morne]

Seems you dont get those here (XPS Studio laptop)
only the precision range

[glorybound]

Sounds interesting Bobby - do you have a link to some more info?

Microsoft RemoteFX

[skogskalle]

hmm im bumping this thread... a friend told me he used something called Subversion at work. Its a open source program that helps you sync your computers to a fileserver, so you have one fileserver thats always running, and you keep copys of all files locally on all workstations as well, and everytime you change/add/delete files from a workstation it syncs so that the same changes happens on the fileserver and other workstations too. (and it keeps a record of changes so you can bring back files that were deleted/changed)
My friend is a programmer so the files are generally alot smaller than 3d models/vray proxies etc, but I guess it should work just as well with larger files? (at least in theory)

Anyone out there using this or a similar program? Any thoughts or recommendations or warnings?

Thanks in advance!
Kalle

[joconnell]

Subversion is a code repository mainly - deals with the tracking of file code for programmers so while I'm sure it has a tonne of functionality to deal with dates / changes and so on I'm not sure if that could get into the locked binary files of the .max format. You'd get similar results from having a mirroring system which could be quite useful depending on your internet connection speed and how large your files are. Something like drop box would even work on smaller setups.