sharing Irradiance map in distributed rendering?

[cgrande]

Once again...
of course they do.
I can use all the servers using bucket mode. I just want them to all use the irradiance map but that end of it is not working.
Seriously now, an authority please, I guess I'll have to email chaos.

[Dynedain]

Seriously now, an authority please, I guess I'll have to email chaos.

I have been doing VRay netrenderings with saved irrmaps for 6 months now and max netrendering for a couple years, having done all the installation/setup/config myself. I was merely trying to help you troubleshoot your problem, with common issues that people run into with netrendering.

Commonly, the backburner service is running as a user that doesnt have the same permissions as the user that is logged in and running max. Hence, why during netrender it can't see the vrmap in the shared location. It would still work fine in bucket mode, because the backburner/vrayspawner generated max process wouldn't need to look for the saved irrmap, but would not be able to find the irrmap if it didn't have appropriate user permisions.

Also, do you have any maps (texture or otherwise) that are in a shared location? Do they have problems when netrendering? Check to see if the "include maps" option is enabled or not. A vrmap can get quite large and you may or may not want it being pushed with the maxfile at rendertime.

[cgrande]

Okay, but the max netrender service or 'server' runs fine without vray and finds all the appropriate maps. Actually all of the machines we're using have administrator rights and can see all the networked drives. We're just testing on 2 computers again the one running Max and DR and the slave. If I send a net render job that has texture maps in a network drive the other machine finds the maps just fine. If I use DR with a UNC path for the irradiance map the machines dont find the map.
Can you tell me specifically what the deal could be with the permisions and DR specifically because all other types of net rendering works.
Sorry for the snaps, just that its getting really frustrating.
thanks again.

[Dynedain]

believe me...i understand your frustration

Vray DR uses the vrayspawner service as you probably already know. If you go into the services control panel (control panel-admin tools-services) and find the vray spawner service, open it. Go to the "log on" tab, and see if it is running as a user that has permissions to access the shared folder. I would not recommend using "log on as local system account" and instead pick a username/password that you know for sure can access the shares properly.

This is of course assuming you are using Max5. If you are using the Max6 DR hack, you'll be looking for "backburner server" in the services list instead of vray spawner to make that log on change. Of course, doing the same thing for backburner in Max5 is a good idea.

If you are not running backburner server and/or vray spawner as services and are just manually launching them on the render node, just double check that the user you are running them can access the share properly from that render node.

If all that doesnt clear things up, and other maps are working fine, try droping the vrmap in the same folder as the other maps...could be something not behaving properly.

I really hope this helps, and if nothing else, closes up some of the questions.

[cgrande]

That did it! Basically that other computer just had "log on as local account"! How could we have missed that? backburner2 server is running with administrator rights but not vrayspawner in services.
Thanks a lot. Its working fine now.

[Dynedain]

no prob...now you see why i was asking the stupid tech-support like questions....even us 'experts' make simple, easy to miss mistakes sometimes

[Da_elf]

i get around having path errors by having a drive on my server computer with the letter Z assigned. Thats where i keep all textures and work files. on all the other computers i have network mapped drives using the letter Z.

[RErender]

Dynedain will now officially be refered to as "The Authority" when it come to DR issues

Glad you got it working cgrande.

[cgrande]

Da_elf
That's fine but that was NOT the problem. The problem was that when Vrazy spawner is installed as a service you have to manually give it permissions in services otherwise it will not find the vraymap.
Sharing a common drive letter on a networked drive is a good idea and actually that's where we would put our vraymap but didnt work until we gave vrayspawner a name and password that had permissions in 'log on' in services.

[cgrande]

probleme solved! thanks to all.