Setting up a render farm guide

[Aarchitects]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of putting together a website with some comprehensive information about setting up a renderfarm (with particular attention to vray) as I found the information in the documentation and online resources was scattered and there was no definitive guide.

I was thinking of creating a simple online resource that really breaks down what you need to do into simple steps that are easy to follow, for example a lot fundamental instructions I found in the documentation really weren't emphasized stongly enough I ran into many issues when setting up my own render farm, things like:

You must run a backburner job before the vray spawner will work
You must point your copy of vray even when installing just the render server element to the license server if you are using a network license or it wont work
How to repath all materials in 3DSmax to a shared network drive and how to setup the correct permissions to allow the render slaves to access the materials
How to get better stability when rendering out using the vray distributed render setup, how to setup Distributed Rendering with backburner and Vray.
How issues like missing photometric maps can cause the renderslaves to kick out the render
Or how an imported CAD file with blocks left in can cause a scene to be kicked out.
And preparing drawings for use with 3DStudioMax / Design.
The best way to clone machines.
etc...

I didn't find anything online that dealt with all of these issues, and whilst I'm no expert, the challenges I have recently faced getting our office renderfarm to work well have led me to think; if only there was a central resource that covered all of this.

I have also writen a web application that can check if a bunch of render slaves are online and ready to be used for rendering, this script can shutdown and boot them up using wake on lan. If anyone is interested, I will release it for others to use although it is a bit a bit basic at the moment.

It would be good to get some feedback on these ideas? Mainly if people would find such a resource useful?

[jacksc02]

Dan, you might want to post this in a different section of the forum. You wont get any proper responses here

[Aarchitects]

Thanks Chris,

The problem I have right now is that until the Chaos Group Support Team get their act together (I hope one of you is reading this) respond to my emails and give me access to post on the other forums I think I'm pretty much stuck being able to only post on this forum at the mpment.

[tangelder]

Hi Dan,

This is a great idea because we are in the middle of setting up our own renderfarm and we can certainly use information on this topic.

Best regards,

Joost

[crazy homeless guy]

You must run a backburner job before the vray spawner will work Really? That is not the case for myself. I am fairly sure Spawner works right away.

You must point your copy of vray even when installing just the render server element to the license server if you are using a network license or it wont work I use batch scripting to copythe Vray files to the remote machnes, rather than manually setting them up. This was they already have the license server info in them.

How to repath all materials in 3DSmax to a shared network drive and how to setup the correct permissions to allow the render slaves to access the materials There are scripts for this on ScriptSpo, but in reality you should always work from a shared drive using UNC or DFS pathing. Otherwise you run into problems.

How to get better stability when rendering out using the vray distributed render setup, how to setup Distributed Rendering with backburner and Vray. Again, I have no stability issues, and DBR through Backburner works fine as long as I have it turned on when I send the file.

How issues like missing photometric maps can cause the renderslaves to kick out the render Again, always work from network drive, using UNC or DFS pathing. If you do this, then you should never have an issue with a missing file

Or how an imported CAD file with blocks left in can cause a scene to be kicked out. I can't say I have run into this problem, but it is good to know in case I do. Also, there is a DWG CleanUp script on ScriptSpot that will remove the CAD Blocks

______________

I didn't find anything online that dealt with all of these issues, and whilst I'm no expert, the challenges I have recently faced getting our office renderfarm to work well have led me to think; if only there was a central resource that covered all of this. I would say this is mostly a lack of clean functionality in Max, or improper setup of a render farm. None of the issues exist for me.

I have also writen a web application that can check if a bunch of render slaves are online and ready to be used for rendering, this script can shutdown and boot them up using wake on lan. If anyone is interested, I will release it for others to use although it is a bit a bit basic at the moment.

That script sounds cool. I would love to test it.

In general, we keep our projects and asset library on our server. All machines are setup from the start to access this server without problems by our IT department. I then have a batch script that copies the necessary files to the computer in order to make Vray work. This includes Chaos group files, repathing the plug-in directory to point to the server, placing a shortcut in the start-up directory for both backburner and spawner, etc..

[Aarchitects]

Thanks for the reply.

These were just a few examples of issues I hit along the road to setting up our render farm, it was very much a trial and error sort of thing and I just thought the information out there was not really concise.

Things like run a back burner job first are i think issues related to setting up a copy of max which has never previously been used, as I'm sure you are aware, max like all Autodesk products does a further installation of various files when first run, I would assume that this is somehow related as it is a side note in the VRay documentation for DR that this must be done to make it work. I don't know if you have a couple of server cabs with dedicated machines setup or if you are just using other workstations that have already had max installed prior but I think each requires a slightly different setup.

For reference if you look at the VRay manual it is listed as an installation note.
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150S..._rendering.htm

It says: "Note that if you create a fresh install of 3ds Max on a machine, you will need run at least one Backburner job with this machine as a server, before you can use the machine for distributed rendering."

I completely missed that one the first time i setup the machines, as it a appears as a side note in the documentation and thought it wasn't working.

It's good to know there are max scripts that perform such tasks as repathing and fixing DWGs, its just a shame that the information and knowledge seems to be scattered across the web or obfuscated.

I have approached our DR project as an IT manager, not as a visualiser and have absolutely no experience with using 3DSmax or AutoCAD but I would have killed to have a central resource that explained how to get this setup properly. it would be really good to have experience from someone who has been doing DR for a while and lend their ideas and input into this project.

I run a web development business as a side project so have no issue setting up the site and putting the information I have gleaned up there, but i would be great to get a few "super users" to offer further tips as has been posted above, and review the information I will post to check the accuracy.

If anyone is interested in helping me centralise this information, that would be great.

[cmckenzie]

Hello

I am having a farm setup problem. My farm had been set up and working for several years. I lost my domain connection and had to recreate my network...so I was not working from a fresh max installation. I setup the new network and have not been able to get the farm machines to work. When a render is started Vray recognizes the specifed DR servers but when render tasks are assigned the connection to the machine fails. I recieve a message "Render host Farm1(192.168.1.173) is not responding.

The farm machines are Windows 7 and the Vray License server is an XP box. All addresses are specified by IP's and there is no firewall. I can ping all of the machines from any location on the network and as per previous Vray see's them all when a render starts but cannot distribute any task...my 30 day license for max, on the farm machines, has expired so I cant go into max to check settings...any help would be appreciated.

[Da_elf]

someone should move this thread over to take5-offtopic its not really a discussion to be help in the public section

[claude_tnt]

elf,
6999 damnn ...
congrats on your 7 grand post

claude_tnt

[Da_elf]

wow. never noticed. my 7000 would have past without me noticing and i would have wasted it on some random post. instead im making it happen on this post wheeee


EDIT: hmmm no balloons and glitter fell from the roof. no band played. no award ceremony. bummer