Faq
What's the price of Muster and how the licensing works ?
Muster is available with a node-counted license or an unlimited one. The unlimited license let you run our server component accepting an unlimited number of external nodes for calculation. The license allows the usage of one single server, if you need to segment your renderfarm for performance reasons, you'll need an additional license for each individual server you want to deploy. At the opposite side, the single client license let you license, using a floating license scheme, a limited number of external nodes for calculation. Also be sure to understand the difference between node and instance, because in our license scheme, each instance counts as a node.A single client license scheme is cheaper for the unlimted one until you reach an average count of 30 nodes.You should also consider that an unlimited license give you enough freedom to add hosts on the fly. For information about updated prices, check our online store page.
I need to relocate the license and change my server
You need to choose carefully your dispatcher server because a license relocation will cost you about 10% of the price of the original license.
Can i get a trial version and what are the limits of the evaluation version ?
The evaluation version is basically a "free" version that let you use Muster on 2 render nodes plus the Dispatcher itself. There are no limits on the evaluation, you can use it for personal of commercial uses. However, considering the topics that Muster covers, you may need a temporary license to test it on your entire renderfarm. In such case, please get in touch with vinfo@vvertex.com to request a temporary license. To speed up things, remember to locate your Dispatcher service HOST ID as explained in the licenses section of our site, and send it attached to your license request.
I need to extend a single client license, can I upgrade to unlimited ?
Once you choose the single client license scheme, you'll need to reach the amount of 35 nodes license to be elegible for a free upgrade to an unlimited nodes license.
I want to upgrade to the latest version of Muster, do I am elegible ?
Check the latest promotions available on the site, but generally, users of a previous version of Muster, can upgrade to the unlimited license of the latest version of Muster just purchasing an unlimited upgrade.
What platforms are compatible with the latest version of Muster ?
Muster is compatible with a wide range of systems. On the Windows platform, we support Windows 2000 and later, 64 bit installers will work only on Windows XP 64 and later. Mac OS X is supported starting from 10.4.8, both PowerPC and Intel platforms are supported. Linux is supported starting from GLIBC2.5 for 32 bit installers and GLIBC2.6 for 64 bit installers. Double check your distribution, we provide ready to run init.d scripts for debian, suse, redhat and their variants but we cannot guarantee that those will work on any distribution available on the market.
What softwares and rendering engines are compatible with the latest version of Muster ?
Check the side bar on the Muster product page, you'll find a detailed supported engines chart.
What guidelines I need to follow to select my Dispatcher server ?
The choose of the Dispatcher service is related to a lot of factors. We suggest to read carefully the Muster manual that will give detailed information about the Muster requisities. As a general rule, higher is the amount of hosts you connect and more powerfull should the Dispatcher be. Also the speed of your renders will affect the amount of the operation the Dispatcher must manage, so be sure to calibrate the size of each packet to avoid overloading the Dispatcher. You should also consider a fault tollerant disk infrastructure to avoid database corruption on a power or hardware failure.
What network infrastructure I need to deploy to run my render farm ?
If you run a network with a limited amount of nodes and a medium sized scene files, you can just install the software with no particular changes. Otherwise, if you plan to run a serious overloaded renderfarm, read carefully the Muster user manual and how to separate the Muster network data flow from the standard file shares data to avoid stalls on the Dispatcher service activity.
I have submitted a job but it does not start
If you are sure you have at least one client available to render your job and there are no pools, users or any other kind of selection limit and your job still does not start, you may have that particular render engine unconfigured on the render node. This may happen also for a failure of the installer that's not able, on any kind of circumnstance, to detect the installed applications on the client. To double check, right click on your render node, and select "supported templates". If the engine is not checked, right click on the node, select "configure", then locate the templates tab, search for your engine, and make sure it is checked and that the paths to the render engine executable are well configured. Once you configured the node, right click on it and select "soft restart" to reload the service preferences.
I have submitted a job but I get a red cross under the J and T columns
Read the manual, the J and T columns are very important, they tells you that something gone wrong and Muster blocked further assignments of a particular engine (T) or a particular job (J) to the render node. Check the log pane for a red line, or reattempt a render enabling the realtime log (right click on the node and select real time log), this will show you the log produced by the render engine in real time so you can catch the error. To restore operations on the node, you need to purge the lists by right clicking on the node, and selecting "purge job/template exclusion list"
My job is failing and I cannot find any rendered frame
Check the log produced by the render engine. Enable the realtime log for an easier debug, and reinit the job launching it again. Carefully search the lines for the reason of the failure. You may have a write permission error depending on the permissions of the share, and the system user assigned to the render client service.
I can render sliced images but the image assembler is failing
Check the user assigned to the Dispatcher service and the share permissions. The final image is assembled by the Dispatcher and it must have the same read/write capabilities of the render nodes, this includes access rights and drive mapping configurations.
