Because when the server is done rendering a frame, it needs to save that out in a common location. So, we need one shared folder that all of these computers can read and write to, to actually do the network rendering process. Because we have multiple computers, we need a common network location. We need a common place to store all of our data. So in addition to this, we also need one more thing. So that you can have the rendering program on the machine, so that the whole process will work. Now, of course any of these machines that are running Server also need to have a copy of Maya or Max or whatever installed. And you can also run Monitor on any machine you want, to look at the whole process. And then you can have as many server programs running as you want. You only have one Manager program running. Now, the server machines are not allowed to run Manager. And the Manager machine can also run Monitor, which allows you to look at the process. Which is kind of nice because you can set up a bunch of jobs and send them out and have your machine render them overnight, without having to have multiple machines. So that means that you could actually network-render within a machine. Now, the Manager computer will be obviously running, the Manager program.
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We have one Manager in the whole network and then we can have multiple servers. Now, let's take a look at how this all is set up. It's really kind of your interface into that whole process. It allows you to turn servers on or off, re-prioritize things and so on. But if you want to take a look at what's going on, Monitor is your interactive management and scheduling. You could actually run all of Backburner just using Manager and Server. Now, Monitor is actually your interface into this process. When it's done, it'll tell Manager that I need another frame and the process repeats. Server will go ahead and launch Maya and render that frame. So, Manager tells Server to render, say, frame 20.
![autodesk backburner 2014 autodesk backburner 2014](http://s5.hostingkartinok.com/uploads/images/2013/10/81fb27310b06394b4bf2084d7398ae39.jpg)
Server, is the one that actually renders the frames. Manager really is the core of Backburner and it's the program that assigns the frames to the servers. Now, let me explain what each of these does. Now, Backburner consists of three separate programs, these programs are Manager, Monitor and Server. We're going to look at this from the Maya's stand point but you can use this techniques on the other Autodesk packages. So, this actually applies to a number of different Autodesk applications. So now we're going to take a look at Backburner which is network rendering for Maya as well as for 3ds Max and Toxik.