I have two pcs, my main machine and an additional machine for assisting with renders.
As I learn about Phoenix, I understand it is possible to submit a simulation via BB or Deadline (I use Deadline) for my other pc to carry out while freeing up my main pc.
My question is, if I do that, can I then switch off my main pc and allow just the slave pc to work on the simulation ? I’m wondering if the slave would fail with a ‘cannot find licence’ error of some sort.
(my small network is very new and I’ve not had time to try this out).
My secondary question is, can I submit multiple simulations, one for each pc, to run at the same time ?
Finally, do I need to buy another Phoenix licence just so I can continue working with Phoenix on my main pc (including any simulations) whilst the slave executes a simulation ?
In short - a running simulation requires a Simulation license. 1 standard full Phoenix license = 1 GUI license + 1 Simulation license. For example, if you run 5 simulations on 5 different machines, you will need 5 Simulation licenses. If you open the GUI of 3ds Max, you will need a GUI license. Note that 1 machine cannot consume more than 1 GUI license and 1 simulation license, no matter how many 3ds Max instances you open or how many simulations you run.
I haven’t tried shutting down a machine from which I have sent a BB or Deadline job, but I suppose it should keep working once it’s started - depends on how BB and Deadline handle it, but in theory there shouldn’t be issues once the job is already on another machine.
I’ll contact my reseller and ask them how much Phoenix Simulation licences cost (I wasn’t even aware that such a thing existed until just now).
PS - looking into the future, would it be safe to predict that simulations will one day be distributed across networks, so that slave machines can share in their calculations ? (seems obvious to me, but…)
Ah, yes, it would be good to get there, but unfortunately distributed simulations don’t scale nowhere near distributed rendering, so there is a lot to improve on a single PC before going there…
@Svetlin,
I dont know if this is bending the rules a bit but is it technically possible to run the GUI license on one pc(my workstation) and the Sim node part of the license on another workstation via backburner?
