External rendering machine

[rbq23]

Hello Everyone!

I am interior designer working with Sketchup and V-Ray.

My company is working on OSX (mostly iMac's, some MacBook's and Mac Pro) and I found that it is getting pretty expensive to get nice results in terms of rendering time.
Unfortunately we cannot just skip from Apple hardware to PC's so my idea is to keep all Apple computers that we have right now and buy one PC that will be only used for rendering.
Therefore I have some questions:
1. Is it possible to create "network" where any of 6 computers running under OSX can use this PC as a rendering machine?
2. Is Sketchup needed on this PC or V-Ray will be enough (or some components)?
3. How to start with this project?

[ivan.slavchev]

Hello Everyone!
1. Is it possible to create "network" where any of 6 computers running under OSX can use this PC as a rendering machine?
2. Is Sketchup needed on this PC or V-Ray will be enough (or some components)?
3. How to start with this project?

1. Yes
2. You should have V-Ray SWARM installed - https://download.chaosgroup.com/?product=58
3. Just install SWARM on the machine. A video guide is available here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b-HPqfpY_4
Documentation - https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAYSWARM

Please mind that you'll need a V-Ray render node license for SWARM to work on an additional machine. Depending on your current licenses count you can either use an existing license while no one is using it or - if all licenses are engaged all or most of the time - you can purchase an additional V-Ray render node license.

Also - you can try V-Ray Cloud if you want to speed up your rendering. It's easy to use, fast and - since it's currently in Beta - free You can join the Beta from the link here - https://www.chaosgroup.com/vray/cloud