Fuses, Macros, Settings, Plugins - Network Rendering

I have a comp that's using a few Fuses, and rendering locally works just fine, but when I send it to the render manager, it fails on the same local machine (saying "Unknown tool found")

Do I need to move all my Fuses, Macros, Settings, and Plugins to a central network location for network rendering to work when referencing these tools? Since it didn't work with Fuses, I'm just trying to understand what I need to put into a shared location so I don't get failed comps.

I'm assuming that if I move all of these to a central location, I only need to change the Render Manager Preferences Path Maps, and not on each local machine. Is that right?

Yes, you need to have a central location for Fuses and plugins, or you need to distribute them to the local machines (which is MUCH better because Fusion will load faster). Macros and settings are stored in the .comp file, so you don't need to load them.

Thanks Chad,

"MUCH better" is what i'm after, I'll move everything local to each node instead of a central location on the server. Thanks again.

I checked my pathMaps for the workstation and it's set to look at "AllDocs:Fuses;Fusion:Fuses"

My workstation Fuses have been placed in:
C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\Fusion\Fuses

The Render Manager has the same pathMap for Fuses in "AllDocs:Fuses;Fusion:Fuses"

But when I try to render with the same workstation through the network it's not finding the Fuse's used in the comp.

Should I change the pathMaps for both the workstation and the Render Manager? Just not sure why the workstation can't render when used as a slave in the Render Manger when it CAN find the fuses local.

Find out what AllDocs: and Fusion: are resolving to. If FusionRenderNode.exe and Fusion.exe aren't in the same folder, the paths will be different.

Thanks again Chad,

I installed the render nodes as a default install. This is the folder structure of the install.

C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\Fusion
C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\Fusion Render Node

So they are in separate folders, which makes sense why the render node doesn't see them. I just copied the missing items the console mentioned into the \Fusion Render Node location. It did require closing the Render Manger and relaunching, but after that it all renders through the Render Manager as expected.

This makes adding plugins and Fuses to 11 render nodes a bit of a hassle, but if it's faster and it works, it's worth it.

Computers are good at automation.

Fusion gives you a lot of ways to manage this, so just figure out what works best for you. Could be scheduled tasks, group policy, local caching, etc..