Setting Up Sharing
OK, back to ScreamerNet and sharing the files it needs.
We know what ScreamerNet needs to be able to find. Now is the time to figure out where to put these files. By default, LightWave stores most of its files in one folder, usually found on the main hard drive in a folder called LightWave. If yours is different from this, don’t worry.
When I say "most files," this is because Windows steps in here and interferes a little! If a program is written to conform with Windows protocol, it stores its preference files in user-specific folders. The idea is that many people using one machine can have their own preferences and setups, and technically this is a good idea, but it can cause problems with ScreamerNet if you’re not sure which preference files LightWave is using. To avoid confusion, either use one set of preference files or "point" LightWave to the right files when it starts up—more on this later.
The location of these preferences depends on which version of Windows you are using, but it is either in C:\WinNT\Profiles\WhichUser or C:\Documents & Settings\WhichUser. If in doubt, do a search for LW9.cfg and see where they are.
The content files are also usually stored within the main LightWave folder, but again these can moved anywhere you like as long as you tell LightWave and ScreamerNet where the new location is.
To make this tutorial the same for all users, I’m going to suggest that the LightWave content, config files, and command folder all be stored in the main LightWave folder (on the master computer). If you don’t want to do this, just make sure you replace all pathnames to these items with the new location you’ve decided on.
Before we start sharing these files, you must create some new folders in your LightWave directory. Figure 15.25 shows the folder structure for a typical LightWave installation and the new folders you need to create.
Figure 15.25 Here is a typical LightWave directory showing the folders created during installation and the new ones you must create.
The new folders are screamernet_command, screamernet_save, config_lightwave, and config_screamernet. These are in the command folder, a folder to which to save the rendered frames, the regular LightWave config folder, and a config folder specifically for ScreamerNet use.
OK, we now have placeholder locations for all the items ScreamerNet needs. They are all in one place, and all we need to do now is share the folder across the network so all the computers can see it.
The process for this might differ slightly depending on which version of Windows you are using. I use Windows XP Professional, but the principles are the same for nearly all versions of Windows.
Locate your main LightWave folder on the master computer and right-click it to bring up the context-sensitive menu. In the list, there should be a Sharing and Security option (see Figure 15.26); if not, select the Properties option and find the Sharing tab.
You should now be presented with another window. Under the Sharing tab, there should be an option to turn on sharing for that folder. When activated, you can enter a name in the Share name box. You can call this anything you like, but something succinct like "screamernet" is all that is needed, and just to be safe, make sure it’s all lowercase with no spaces, as in Figure 15.27.
Figure 15.26 Right-click your LightWave folder to view the Sharing and Security option.
Figure 15.27 The Sharing option for the LightWave folder.
While you’re in there, make sure you set the Share Permissions for the folder to Full Control so that any computer (or render node) can read from and write to the LightWave folder. See Figure 15.28.
Figure 15.28 When accessed,you’ll find the Share Permissions dialog box.
Now if you browse your Windows network, you should be able to see the folder you’ve just shared (see Figure 15.29).
Figure 15.29 After you set up the folders for sharing, you can view them.
Setting Up the Master Computer
Now that all the folders are in place and are accessible across the network, we can begin to set up the computers.
Setting up the master is a little more involved than setting up render nodes because this computer has the main LightWave installation on it, which means it’s the computer that is normally used for editing scenes, creating objects and texture maps, and so on.
As mentioned earlier, LightWave uses config files to determine where certain things are. The pathnames to these items are local to the computer they reside on. This causes problems for ScreamerNet because it needs the pathnames to be "network-aware."
What this means is that we will need two sets of config files: one set for when we are working with LightWave as normal, and another set for when we are using ScreamerNet.
This is why we created the two folders (config_lightwave and config_screamernet) earlier.
By default, LightWave won’t know anything about these folders because we created them, so we need to tell LightWave to use them. The easiest way to do this in Windows is to "point" LightWave to the correct set of config files when it loads.
Fortunately, this is easy to do in Windows using shortcuts. Windows shortcuts can pass information to a program as it loads by typing commands into the Target box. To locate this box, you’ll need to find the existing shortcut to LightWave Layout in your Start Menu or create some new ones from scratch in the usual manner.
You’ll need to create two shortcuts to the LightWave Layout program, one for regular LightWave use and one for ScreamerNet use (see Figure 15.30).
Figure 15.30 Create two shortcuts to LightWave Layout, one for everyday LightWave use and the other just for ScreamerNet.
After you’ve created the two shortcuts, right-click them and bring up the Properties dialog box for each one (see Figure 15.31).
Find the box called Target.
For normal LightWave use, enter the following:
C:\LightWave\Programs\lightwav.exe -cc:\LightWave\config_lightwave For ScreamerNet use, enter the following:
C:\LightWave\Programs\lightwav.exe -0 -cc:\LightWave\config_screamernet
Figure 15.31 Right-click on the shortcuts you’ve created to bring up the Properties dialog box.
The first part, C:\LightWave\Programs\lightwav.exe, has to do with the shortcut, and it’s simply a path to the LightWave Layout program. The second part is the bit we’re interested in, -cc:\LightWave\config_screamernet, where the -c switch tells LightWave you are providing the location of the config files, and c:\LightWave\config_screamernet is the path to where the config files are located. Note there is no space between the -c and c:\LightWave\config_screamernet.
We don’t need these paths to be network-aware because they are not used by ScreamerNet; they simply point LightWave to the files that do contain the information ScreamerNet needs.
Now that we have the shortcuts for LightWave pointing to the correct config files, you need to actually copy your existing config files to both the config_lightwave and con-fig_screamernet folders so that any custom menus, color settings, plug-ins you’ve added, and so on are loaded when you run LightWave. As mentioned earlier, these config files might be located in different places, depending on your version of Windows, so simply do a search for LW9.cfg. When found, copy the files LW9.cfg and LWEXT9.cfg into the two config folders you’ve created.
OK, now everything is in place to run the version of LightWave Layout that will be using the ScreamerNet config files.
You need to set up a few things in this version of LightWave so that the settings are saved to the ScreamerNet version of the config files when you quit the program.
The first item is where the command folder is located on the network. This option is found under the Render > Network Rendering menu (see Figure 15.32) in the Network Rendering dialog box (see Figure 15.33).
Figure 15.32 LightWave’s Network Rendering panel is found under the Render tab in Layout.
Clicking the Command Directory button opens another window in which you can locate the shared network folder on the master machine. If you are using the names suggested in this tutorial, the folder is called screamernet_command and is inside the screamernet shared folder. Figure 15.34 shows the dialog box.
Whenever you browse for anything in the screamernet shared folder like this, make sure you browse from Entire Network. If you added screamernet as a Network Place shortcut and used that, it seems Windows resolves to a local pathname, which causes problems because the path is no longer network-aware. I learned the hard way!
Figure 15.33 LightWave’s Network Rendering panel, where you can set up multiple renders and network rendering.
Figure 15.34 The Browse for Folder panel, shown accessing the screamernet_command and other folders.
The next item to set is the content directory. This is found under the General Options panel (press the o key), as shown in Figure 15.35. Click the Content Directory button and locate the screamernet shared network folder again. Select the top-level screamer-net folder and click OK (see Figure 15.36).
Almost done! The last thing we need to set up is the location of the plug-ins on the network. Some tutorials tell you to open the LWEXT9.cfg file and perform a search and replace on the pathnames. You could do it that way, but it’s easier (and less error-prone) to rescan your plug-ins using the shared network path location.
The option to scan your plug-ins can be found under Layout > Plugins > Edit Plug-ins menu (or Alt+F11), as shown in Figure 15.37.
Figure 15.35 LightWave’s General Options panel, accessible by pressing o on the keyboard.
Figure 15.36 The Browse for Folder panel used again.
Figure 15.37 LightWave’s Edit Plugins panel is found under the Utilities tab in Layout and Modeler.
This opens the Edit Plug-ins window, where you will find the option to Scan Directory (see Figure 15.38).
Figure 15.38 The Edit Plug-ins panel enables you to scan for multiple plug-ins or to simply add one at a time.
Click the Scan Directory button, locate the Plugins folder on the shared network, and click OK to scan the folder (see Figure 15.39).
Figure 15.39 When scanning for plug-ins, you can also scan across your network.
Repeat this process and locate the Lscripts folder. That’s the master computer setup (see Figure 15.40)!
Figure 15.40 The Browse for Folder panel again, used for adding plug-ins.
To recap, you created two shortcuts to the LightWave Layout program. Each shortcut pointed to a different set of config files, one for normal LightWave usage and the other for ScreamerNet use.
You then copied the existing config files into the config_lightwave and config_screamernet folders. When done, you loaded the version of LightWave pointing to the ScreamerNet config files.
Next, you set up the content folder and the command folder, and rescanned the plug-in list. This saved the network-aware pathnames for each item into the ScreamerNet config files.
