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Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 15:19:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Gross <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: ScreamerNet II operational options
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>John Gross ScreamerNET stuff snipped
>
>     Ironically, my remote machine has no trouble finding the content
> directory, but I think that is an artifact of having worked on that network
> drive from that machine, i.e. it's content directory is already set (via
> Layout?) to the appropriate network drive, in this case G:.

When you exit Layout, you write the current Content Directory to the
lw.cfg file. Ideally, Content Directroy should be set to a server or
drive that *all* machines on the net can see. This is a requirement for
SN to function properly.

Because Content Dir is relative in the created scene files (As long as
your Cont Dir was set properly before setting up your scenes,)As long as
each SN node running started and read a LW.cfg filre that pointed to the
proper directory, all should work. One drive may have the C.D. mapped as
X: while another may have it mapped to S:. No problem as long as each SN
node running on those two machines read a LW.cfg file that pointed to
each path correctly (one would read "X:\... and the other would read as
S:\....) Of course, to keep things simple you should map your C.D. drive
to all Nodes as the same letter. Then you don't have to worry as much.

Here's how I have it set up at Amblin:

We have one shared drive (X:\) that contains directories titled seaQuest,
Voyager, Legend, Sliders, etc. In each of these directories is a complete
content setup (ie Images, Objects, Scenes, etc). Animators working on
seaQuest set their Content Directory to X:\seaQuest, animators on
Voyager, X:\Voyager, etc.

Our ScreamerNEt is set up similarly with another drive, S:\, as our SN
command drive. On this drive we have an SN directory and inside there are
directories called SQ, STV, Legend, Sliders, etc. On every machine in the
building we have a number of ScreamerNet icons that are set to look for
commands in the proper directories. For example, a Voyager SN icon will
look like this in its argumaent:

LWSN.exe -2 S:\SN\STV\CMD\job37 S:\SN\STV\CMD\ack37

When controlling STV nodes, you set your SN Command Directory to
S:\SN\STV\CMD.

>     A Quick Check:  I just did a quick NOTEPAD gander at the .LWS file, and
> a search on "dire" and "content" and came up empty.  Is the content directory
> stored in the scene file, and only noted if it is changed to something other
> than the default?  ( c:? )

Content Directory is not stored in the Scene file whatsoever, but rather
in the LW.cfg file. Ideally, there is not much of a need to change the
COntent Directory, except in a case as outlined above where you have
different shows or some such.  That could have been done as easily by
having a separate STV drawer in the Objects, Images, Scenes, directories,
but in our case we have separated it out for easy backup, etc purposes.

>     I launch SN from the same directory as LW, so your message above
implied > that it would not generate its own .CFG file, implying that in
that case, it > uses the LW.CFG file.  Is this correct?

Yes. However, on a remote machine, are you also running SN from this same
location? Here may be a problem because if the LW.cfg says that the
Content Dir is D:\NewTek (for instance), The remote node would read that
and try to find the Content on its D: drive (Which would be wrong).
That's why you could a) have the Content on a separate shared drive or b)
make sure that the content drive is mapped to the remote machine using
the same drive letter as it has on its own machine.

>     Lots of ins-and-outs to using SN, it appears.  It might be nicer if >
there were a separate GUI for using SN, rather than having it embedded
within > Layout.  Additional functions would be the ability to specificy
content > directories at render-time for all remote renderers.  Come to
think of it, using > ALL remote renderers prolly makes this pretty
straightforward -- it's when one > tries to use a "local" client
simultaneously that things become confusing.
>
Yes. The SN commands are available to developers so that separate
controllers that allow for more functionality can be developed. As a
matter of fact, Allen has stated this.

JG
--
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