GLOSSARY
The Network Manager service (Network Manager) is a Windows NT service which must be installed on at least one computer in each group of computers which will participate in network rendering.
The Network Manager communicates with a specified group of Network Rendering Servers to assign jobs and monitor rendering progress. The Network Manager also handles the scheduling of jobs and the configuration of servers through the Queue Manager Client. The Network Manager has no user interface itself, but has various options which can be set from within the Queue Manager Client.
You can install and use the Network Manager on a computer that does not have 3DS MAX installed. It's often best to place the Network Manager on a computer that isn’t in use as a workstation and doesn’t get shut down regularly. The Manager Service can impact CPU and network performance when network rendering is taking place, and the Network Manager must be present at all times for network rendering to work.
The ideal place to install the Network Manager is on a file server. If you have a PC already set up as a texture-map file server, this would be an ideal place for it.
You specify which PC is to be the Network Manager in the Network Job Assignment dialog, which is a subdialog of the Render Scene and Video Post Execute Sequence dialogs.