Okay, I just set up my first Backburner render farm where I’d like each server (node) to support our installed, licensed, and operational installations of 3DS Max 2010, Toxic 2010, and Maya 2010.  Fortuantely, the setup and configuration was much easier than Virtual Vertex’s Muster 6 and migration from that system will be very easy.  Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to successfully render any Maya 2010 projects.  3DS Max and Toxic, yes; Maya 2010, no.

The Backburner Queue Monitor indicates the jobs have completed successfully but there is no output in the .\images folder.  I’m at a loss.  The server logs do not indicate any errors or failures so I’m at a loss as to how to continue troubleshooting.

I’ve watched the training videos and downloaded the project files from http://www.digitaltutors.com.  I’m running the version of Backburner provided with the 2010 Entertainment Creation Suite on a PC running Windows XP with SP3. 

I sure hope someone out there can help or provide me with some new insights on where to go from here.

Thanks!
Dan

Okay, since I couldn’t Backburner to render properly as a service (despite having followed all the instructions and read all the available posts I could find on the subject), I’ve resorted to an even simpler method which has been tested and is working fine:

Since our lab computers automatically login anyway, I’ve create a scheduled task to start the server.exe program at 11:45PM.  The server connects to the manager and pending jobs are processed to completion.  Fortunately, we’re using DeepFreeze as well which automatically restarts (and freezes) the computers at 6:00 AM thereby stopping the server and restoring the computer to it’s daily operational state.

Pretty ingenious if I do say so myself :-) Still bothered about not getting the services working but at least now I can move on to other issues.

Dan