“Network rendering”, as described in this document, is the same as command line rendering. It is a way to render 3ds Max scene files without loading the 3ds Max UI. Render farms, render managers (like Deadline and Backburner) and 3dsmaxcmd.exe render scenes this way by default.
If you have purchased a tyFlow PRO license for your workstation, it is not necessarily required to also purchase license(s) for any network render machines that you are using. tyFlow will operate in tyFlow FREE mode when a license is not found, and tyFlow FREE is capable of rendering any scenes containing tyFlow data, with three limitations:
tyFlow FREE is not multithreaded, so data preparation before rendering starts will be slower (but the speed of rendering itself should not be affected).
tyFlow FREE has no GPU acceleration, so GPU-only elements of a simulation with no CPU fallback will not be processed (currently only the CUDA Cloth Collision Solver [CCCS] has no CPU fallback).
tyFlow FREE cannot export tyCache data, so you cannot export tyCaches on unlicensed render machines using tyFlow FREE (tyFlow FREE can still read and load tyCaches for rendering just fine).
Given those caveats, tyFlow FREE is perfectly capable of rendering tyFlow data on unlicensed machines. Only render machines specifically used for GPU accelerated simulations or tyCache export still require a tyFlow PRO license (those features will remain exclusive to tyFlow PRO even when network rendering).
Even though tyFlow FREE is capable of network rendering, some users may not be satisfied with its lower CPU performance during the data preparation phase of a render. In that case, there is an optional tyFlow RENDER version of tyFlow which can be downloaded and installed on render machines. CPU multi-threading is fully unlocked in tyFlow RENDER, and tyFlow RENDER does not require a license to run. tyFlow RENDER is a UI-less version of tyFlow that will only be loaded by 3ds Max during network rendering.
GPU acceleration and tyCache export capabilities are both unavailable in tyFlow RENDER and will still require a regular tyFlow installation and tyFlow PRO license to run. Only full multi-threading is unlocked in tyFlow RENDER. However, GPU accelerated simulations (those that involve CUDA PhysX, cloth, particle binds, etc) should always be cached before rendering (to avoid inconsistencies between frames caused by the indeterminism of certain GPU accelerated algorithms), so the lack of GPU acceleration in tyFlow RENDER should never have an impact on network rendering because you should never be directly network rendering a GPU accelerated simulation without caching it first.
tyFlow RENDER files have the naming convention: “tyFlow_XXXX_render.dlo”, where “XXXX” is the version of 3ds Max being targeted (ex: “tyFlow_2022_render.dlo”). They can be found and downloaded on the regular tyFlow download page, and should be installed in the same way (ie, place “tyFlow_XXXX_render.dlo” in the same location where you’d normally put “tyFlow_XXXX.dlo”). “tyFlow_XXXX_render.dlo” and “tyFlow_XXXX.dlo” can be loaded by 3ds Max simultaneously (you don’t have to choose one or the other - you can install them both), as long as they exist together in the same folder.
If you install tyFlow RENDER there is no reason to remove regular tyFlow, and it may be beneficial to keep regular tyFlow installed anyways, in case you need to load 3ds Max in regular UI mode on the machine where tyFlow RENDER is installed. If you only install tyFlow RENDER on a machine, you will not be able to open scenes in UI mode if regular tyFlow is missing (you will get missing Class ID errors), so it is a good idea to keep both versions of tyFlow installed just in case, if you choose to install tyFlow RENDER.
To avoid inconsistencies between workstation results and render results, make sure your installed version of tyFlow RENDER matches your installed version of tyFlow.