Distributed Rendering help please

[liebke]

I have sketchup 8 pro + v-ray 1.49.01 Is there a way to setup a Distributed Rendering using multiple machines, 7 in total; if yes, can explain how to configure?.

I did follow the installation instruction from the manual but I can’t make to work the render farm ,
1 machine is the server where I install the spawner
6 workstations.
I appreciate any response
Thanks in advance.

[dkendig]

Here's the way DR works.

1) You need to install the DR Spawner on all of the machines that you would like to use during a render. If you have 7 computers, I would probably recommend installing the DR Spawner on all 7 of them, unless you don't want some or any of the workstations to be involved in a render.

2) Then you need to go to the computer that will be in charge of initiating the render and communicating with any DR Spawners that are being used.

3) Load whatever scene you would like DR to help with, and then go to the render options. There should be an option to enable DR under the System section of the render options, just check the On checkbox under the SettingsDR section of the System render options.

4) After enabling DR, you will need to specify what DR Spawners you would like to use on your network. This is done through the Hosts option, clicking the button that says "..." should open the DR Settings window.

5) You can add as many DR Spawners as you would like by clicking the Add Server button. Be sure to verify that the IP address or hostname you enter is valid!

6) Ensure that the DR Spawner is up and running on all of the machines that you have specified in your DR settings. The DR Spawner does not automatically launch or run in the background, so visually verify that it is running.

7) Start a render on the machine we started using in step 2, you should notice that the machines running DR Spawners will have a bunch of text that appears in the console window of the DR Spawner. You should also notice that there are more render buckets appearing in the VFB than normal, on the machine that we started the render on.

Tips:
-The DR Spawner can speed up big renders, but in some cases, it can actually slow down renders. When you use DR, we have to send information to each of the DR Spawners being used. If you are doing a render that takes less than a minute to complete, you likely will see no improvement when using DR, because the spawners can not contribute to a render without getting all of the necessary information first!

-If you have trouble communicating with a machine on your network, you will likely have a lot of trouble using DR with that machine, so do your best to avoid spotty wifi connections and complicated VPN or security configurations.

-DR can sometimes increase the amount of memory being used by the render. In order to coordinate with all of the DR Spawners, there is a small cost in memory to keep track of what is going on with all of the machines. Although this shouldn't be a large amount, it is something to be aware of.