SUMMARY
This article will explain the three main steps for setting up Nuke and Nuke licences for a render farm. These are:
1. Installing Nuke on the render machines
2. Licensing the render machines
3. Integrating with your render farm software
1. Installing Nuke on the render machines
Firstly, you will need to install Nuke for all machines that will be used for rendering. You need to install Nuke where the render machines can run it from, so you could install it locally on each render machine, or in a central location for applications, provided that your network/pipeline is set up that way.
The install process is the same as installing it on workstations - it is the same application that does the rendering, just run in terminal mode rather than a GUI session. You could run the interactive installer on each individual machine or you could install it remotely and/or silently from a Terminal or Command Prompt.
Instructions for how to install Nuke on each platform can be found in the following sections of Nuke’s documentation:
Installing Nuke on Windows
Installing Nuke on Mac
Installing Nuke on Linux
2. Licensing the render machines
The next step is to point the render machines to your Nuke render (nuke_r) license.
For RLM floating licences, you can either do this by creating client license files or by setting the foundry_LICENSE environment variable and setting it to 4101@serverName, where serverName is the hostname or IP address of your license server.
Please refer to the following article for more information on how to point your machine to a RLM licence server:
Q100264: How to point a machine to your RLM license server
For more information about floating licenses and our server tools, please see the FLU User Guide which is available from the following page:
https://www.foundry.com/licensing
Instructions for setting up Teams login-based render licenses on your render machines can be found in the following article:
Q100674: How to set up your Teams login-based render licenses with a render farm
3. Integrate Nuke with your render farm software
As rendering a Nuke script is just a command line operation, this means Nuke can be used with a wide variety of render management software. The exact steps to set this up will vary between render programs so please consult your chosen render farm software user guide for more information.
More information about using Nuke from the command line can be found in the documentation here:
Command Line Operations
Alternatively, Nuke’s frame server functionality can also be used to distribute rendering across a network. Please see the following section of the Nuke documentation for more information about how to set this up:
Using the Frame Server on External Machines
NOTE: We can not provide support for any third party render farm programs; please contact the render farm software vendor if you encounter any issues with the render farm software itself.
However, if you encounter any issues with installing Nuke, setting up licences, or using the frame server, then please open a Support ticket and provide further details about the issue you are encountering.
Q100064: How to raise a support ticket
FURTHER READING
You can download Nuke from our website, via the following URL:
https://www.foundry.com/products/nuke/download
You can also download the Foundry Licence Utility from the following page:
https://www.foundry.com/licensing/tools
The following article shows how you can automate the frame server setup with bash scripting:
Q100252: Automating the Frame Server setup
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