cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Replace Backburner

Replace Backburner

Backburner is ancient.  Every time you change something, it's a huge pain to try to get working; it's had it's day, and a few more days it never should have had.   I don't necessarily want something as advanced as Deadline, but something that works when you install it, gives useful information about renders and errors, and is somewhat streamlined and modern.


But really, I just want it to work without effort.


Kris.

41 Comments
Anonymous
Not applicable
Agreed. May not increase sales.

But it might just help keeping studios from emigrating to other competing software. That should be just as important.
danny.austin
Advocate
I think our Lord Jesus Christ is probably the only one who could make it happen..

Yes, Back burner development please. For years I've been told by Autodesk employees that Backburner isn't a priority for 3ds max users. That's inaccurate. It absolutely is a priority.

Can I suggest a web browser based platform?
JD3D_CGI
Advocate

When has Autodesk really cared what we want anyway?

danny.austin
Advocate
For about 5 minutes after the subscription check drops... and then it wears off 😉
Anonymous
Not applicable

Funny. We've just cancelled almost all of our subscriptions and keep using older versions that we own partly because of this. Why would anyone "subscribe" to a service that isn't working, and doesn't help you (they cannot even if they wanted to)  when you have problems? 

 

Not a priority.......it's pathetic!  Rendering is the money end of the production pipeline for goodness sake...

danny.austin
Advocate
hear hear.


let's see some movement here Autodesk. Would any of the Autodesk developers or decision makers like to weigh in?
Ihno
Collaborator

Backburner 2019 wasn't in the max 2019 installer and had to be downloaded independently. If you'd ask... I think they'll drop it at some point.

dbhinnant
Advocate

In the last year we have been pretty much forced to give up our perpetual licenses and buy a render engine.  I guess a Backburner replacement is next.

jens.diemer
Collaborator

Any news here?

Anonymous
Not applicable
danny.austin
Advocate

Is this compatible with 3ds max? We are desperate to ditch Backburner. 

JD3D_CGI
Advocate

No, it's not compatible at all, it's a pointless suggestion.

russell_ikin
Explorer

We use Backburner to render VRAY on 9 machines and it just about does the job but frequently stumbles over frames, e.g. servers crashing just before saving the frame etc. etc. One big frustration is the filesize limit due to it being a Win 38 app. Autodesk is 100% wrong about it not being a priority to customers.

danny.austin
Advocate
That's interesting. I didn't know about the file size limit.

Deadline is complicated, expensive and hard to use (It's also an excellent product) and would give a 'New Deadline' a fair chance to right it's wrongs.
imagestud
Contributor

Has ANYTHING been done with Backburner since this post 2 years ago?

dbhinnant
Advocate

Yes... it was eliminated from the install package for 2020.

imagestud
Contributor

Why in the world would AutoDesk continue to recommend it for batch rendering? 8/27/2019 post

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2020/ENU/3DSMa...

 

Any suggestions for a batch render software that works with  Max & Windows 10?

dbhinnant
Advocate

While Backburner is a worn out buggy POS, it can still work.  We have been looking into Deadline.  It seems to be the most popular replacement.

danny.austin
Advocate
...only to say that Deadline (which we switched to about 6 months ago) is a mixed bag. On one hand, it can do amazing things, on the other, it can be extremely techically challenging to setup and use.

It did solve the problems we were having with Backburner though and provided much more verbose ouput for errors (though, few as they were).


danny.austin
Advocate
I investigated a few alternatives. The technical support for Deadline is excellent. During setup and usage I ran into a LOT of problems.. that being said, the team were very helpful, and we got everything straightened out.



AWS cloud rendering integration however... is a completely different story. Unless you are rich, a rocket scientist and have a lot of free time I would not recommend using it. With Deadline support staff holding my hand, after 3 days of working on it, all I had to show was a bill of $253. I didn't even manage to get a render off. There are lots of additional costs like 3ds max node, vray node, manager node...



I decided to drop the idea of using Deadline for additional render power (we have 25 onsite nodes) and have opted to use Vray Cloud. It's the most reliable, straightforward system I have found so far. Pricing is transparent, support staff are legendary and because you effectively cut 3ds max out of the picture by submitting Vray standalone, everything just renders. I realise that this is irrelevant if you're not using Vray but we are, so I thought I'd share.



Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Submit Idea