The Network Manager service (Network Manager) is a service that must be installed on at least one computer in each group of computers that 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 Monitor client.

It's often best to place the Network Manager on a computer that isn't in use as a workstation and isn’t 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, a subdialog of the Render Setup and Video Post Execute Sequence dialogs.