Blackmagic Forum

Hey everyone, dumb question, but where is the render manager? The documentation seems to make it sound like there is a stand alone version of it, but I can only find it when I open fusion and go through the file manager. I want to set up a small farm, but I don't want my workstation to be the render manager. I also only have one license so I need to be able to open fusion on my machine with the dongle, but use the render manager on the server. Am I just missing the file or is it not there anymore?

Thanks in advance

So I did more searching and found this

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=52367&p=305978&hilit=backburner&sid=4b5f23a4a262d3648d2128b9c4abb5f8#p305978

so I guess there is no stand alone render manager anymore? Secondly, I found in the documentation that there should be a renderTool.lua file that allows us to use third party render managers. I don't see that file anywhere. In the location in which it should be, the only file is License.lua. Does anyone know where I can find the renderTool.lua or know if there is another setup document for third party render managers?

tomhome wrote:Does anyone know where I can find the renderTool.lua or know if there is another setup document for third party render managers?

Fusion Render Node Program

On Windows the FusionRenderNode v9 CLI program is located at:

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C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\Fusion Render Node 9\FusionRenderNode.exe


On Linux the FusionRenderNode v9 CLI program is located at:

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/opt/BlackmagicDesign/FusionRenderNode9/FusionRenderNode


On macOS the FusionRenderNode v9 CLI program is located at:

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/Applications/Blackmagic Fusion 9 Render Node/Fusion Render Node.app/Contents/MacOS/Fusion Render Node


Running the CLI render node program with /h or -h added as an argument will give you the usage syntax:

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"/Applications/Blackmagic Fusion 9 Render Node/Fusion Render Node.app/Contents/MacOS/Fusion Render Node" -h

---------------------------------------------------
Starting Fusion Render Node 9.0.2 at 06/Aug/19 21:49:39
/Applications/Blackmagic Fusion 9 Render Node/Fusion Render Node.app/Contents/MacOS/Fusion Render Node
---------------------------------------------------

Fusion Render Node [<filename.comp> | <filename.dfq>] [/quiet] [/render [/frames <frameset>] [/start <frame>] [/end <frame>] [/step <step>] [/quit]] [/listen] [/join <host>] [/log <filename>] [/cleanlog] [/verbose] [/quietlicense] [/version] [/pri high|above|normal|below|idle] [/args [...]]


Regardless of which 3rd party Render Manager you decide to use, the Fusion rendering process running on a render node is going to be launched as a new task in a command prompt/terminal session with code that looks a bit like this:

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FusionRenderNode /path/to/fusion.comp -render -start 1001 -end 1145 -step 1 -quit -quiet


Network Ports and Firewalls

In order for the Fusion unlimited render node licensing to work, your Fusion Studio 9 dongle needs to be plugged into a computer on the same local network sub-net as all the render nodes. Also, you need to have your firewall rules set to allow the FusionServer, FusionScript, and the FusionRenderNode programs to communicate amongst each other on the local sub-net so all of the render nodes can check out a license entitlement from your dongle.

The TCP/UDP port number used for Fuscript is 1144. There is also usage of TCP/UDP port range 49152-49159 too, IIRC from a comment on a WSL post.

Lots of RenderManagers to Choose From

I've heard of people having success using Fusion's render nodes via external render managers like Deadline, Smedge, and RenderPal.



I've never tried them myself but the RoyalRender, Afanasy, and Prism-Pipeline/Pandora render managers should also work for your needs if you're adventurous.

If you are looking over the installation and usage documentation for render managers, it's worth noting that prior to Fusion Studio v9, the earlier FusionRenderNode CLI progam was called "FusionConsoleNode.exe". If you manually update the executable filepath in the render manager to point to the correct Fusion render node application then older render managers will work as expected with almost any Fusion version you might want to install.

If you use any 3rd party add-ons in the Fusion comp files you plan to render on your render farm, you will need to install all of the Fusion plugins, OFX Plugins, and fuses on each of your render nodes.

Use Relative Paths When Possible via PathMaps

If you need to render a fusion comp across Windows/macOS/Linux render nodes you can explore using Fusion "PathMap" values in your Loader/Saver nodes. This PathMap system is how you can define relative locations that can be adapted and customized on a per-workstation, per-render node, or per-comp file approach.

An example PathMap you might enter in a Saver node's Filename field is a string like "Comp:/Image.0000.exr". This would tell Fusion to save an image sequence into the same folder location as the open Fusion composite file is saved in, and the image sequence would be named "Image.####.exr" (with 4 digits of frame padding zeros added to the frame number).

Available PathMap entries can be found in the Fusion preferences window. And you can also add new PathMap entries of your own, too.



If you add a subfolder name after the PathMap vaue in the Fusion saver node settings, it can be handy to turn on the "[x] Create Folder During Render" checkbox so the folder is re-created automatically at render time. This will avoid errors that are sometimes hard to troubleshoot late in the evening.



Always Render to Image Sequences

Note, you can't use a Saver node to write out QuickTime ProRes movies when you are using Fusion's render node system. This is due to licensing restrictions on ProRes encoding so you will have to save out image sequences and then do video encoding in a separate step.

Where to Look For More Info

If you want to know more about Render Manager usage, and the FusionRenderNode.exe program, you can read these posts on the SteakUnderwater Fusion community site:

Can I render my comp from command line without GUI?

Automated Fusion Studio Installs

Fusion 9 And Deadline

Deadline and Fusion

Fusion 9 and Deadline under Linux?

FusionRenderNode - Linux, no display for X11

Tool for segmenting a render into smaller parts

Holy crap, thats alot of info! Thanks so much, it was really great and much appreciated!

tomhome wrote:Holy crap, thats alot of info! Thanks so much, it was really great and much appreciated!

BTW a lot of the external render farm manager tools have introductory offers where they give 2-3 render node licenses away for free to get people started in using the tools.

If you use that approach to evaluate each of the render managers, you can find the right tool that matches your own workflow, and your ease-of-use requirements at no cost. Good luck!

Yeah, I've set up backburner for my Maya tasks and was hoping to get it going with Fusion as well. I found a site that gave instructions how to use cmdjob through a .bat file to submit the flow to backburner, but it requires going into a text file to set the path and stuff. If I knew more about coding I would create a simple GUI, but alas, I dont. I think for right now, since money is not really here for a farm, Ill just use the default render manager in fusion for now.

I did try pandora though, and that one was SUPER easy to set up, but I didn't like how once the job was running, it would disappear in the list, then come back, then disappear. Im sure its not supposed to do that, but with backburner I at least understand what its doing where a new software I'd have to figure out how its working behind the scenes to an extent and figure out its error codes, etc.

Thanks again for all your info and help!

tomhome wrote: Ill just use the default render manager in fusion for now.

The default Fusion render manager is okay-ish but if you are also rendering on the same workstation that runs the render manager you can eventually have memory leaks and other issues that will take out the farm controller system and require a reboot. Not an issue at all if you always render complex comps to an image sequence so there is no lost time.

This situation of stability issues is where using an external render manager will be more reliable if you are making complex comps that push either your GPU, GPU V-RAM or system RAM to the point where occasionally you get hiccups in reliability since you can set each render node's job task size to only process a few frames at a time.

Fuses like Cryptomatte, and the Fusion built-in CustomTool node's usage is where you are likely to see the RAM issues spike and have memory caching/memory purging failures due to how Fusion 16 uses the GPU memory with the JIT interpeter.

Either way, you can still do nice work in Fusion with the internal render manager or an external tool. It's only power user tasks in Fusion when external render managers are the only viable option.