How to distribute plugins?

[k-arts]

Is there a way to distribute plugins like the very best egz material through the network without installing it manually on every machine? Cause i need to set up a few machines now to be added to the render farm.

Cheers

Ralf

[mike.edel]

quite easy...

quote from the max reference:

You can include path annotations to additional INI files within the local plugin.ini and the software will process the files as if they were part of the original plugin.ini. This can be very helpful in settings where several systems on a network are using the same plug-ins. The network administrator need only maintain a single remote INI file, rather than having to update each machine individually.

Example: To add remote INI files to your local plugin.ini:

Open your local copy of plugin.ini with your preferred text editor.
At the bottom of the file, type [Include] and press ENTER.
Below [Include], type these two lines:
myremote=\\remote_dir\remote_plugin.ini
anotherdir=d:\test\extra_plugin.ini

Note: You can give any title to the directory (myremote or anotherdir, in this case) and the directory can be any local or remote directory. In addition, the INI file can have any name.

you can put the plugins on a network share
ideally you take a computer without a connection limit (linux + samba works fine)
in that shared plugin dir, you create the included .ini file
remember that you have to point to shares instead of local files (i.e. vray = \\storeage\globalMax6Plugins\Vray)

actually, vray is a bad example because it needs local files inside the max directory

i also had problems with shag:hair
normally it doesn't need local files, but i didn't get it working without installing it once (i was able to delete the plugin files afterwards while pointing at shared plugins)

the major disadvantage for larger render farms: if one computer is accessing the plugin, you won't be able to delete/update it
+ the time spent starting max can be increased, depending on your network performance (gigabit probably preferable)

cya,

Mike

[k-arts]

Thx

Cheers for this tip

appriciated

ralf

[jacksc02]

egz materials are scipted and you might have problems with the procedure from ther max reference

[gilicom]

usually what i do whenever we get a few new machins is just copy the whole max root directory include all the sub directory from my workstation to all the new max root dir on the new machines (on the existing file dialogue i choose - yes to all) and that's it.
works fine here.
maps ,ies, proxies are on a Linux samba server network drive.

[dgsantana]

Hi, i use a litte program that i wrote in .net for this you can get it here. See the xml for configuration. The only thing it doesn't do is alter the .ini, but as soon i have some time i will implement it.

Link: http://www.4arq.net/stuff/pluginupdate.zip

best regards,
Daniel Santana
4+Arquitectos, Lda