Creating a render farm and need help

[Deaner777]

Our situation is this: We have two employees that create scenes in 3ds Max. We have 2 other computers available to be used as a render farm. One is an older workstation, and the other is a new server that has been spilt into 2 virtual machines. (VM’s)

For one off renders, we use our personal workstation to output the rendering. With animations, we want to use the server and the old workstation, as well as out personal workstation as a big render farm.

As I’m installing v-ray on the various machines, I am confused with which version of v-ray to install where. (Workstation, 3ds Max render slave or Standalone render slave)

We won’t be creating any content with 3ds Max on the server, only using it as a render farm.

My questions are as follows:

1. Does it make sense to put the v-ray license server on the server with the 2 vm’s?
2. What version of v-ray do I install on each of the computers, including the 2 vm’s on the server?
3. One of the employees will soon be working off site with one of the workstations. Does the license server need to me on the same network for that computer to work?

Thanks for your help!

Dean

[ivan.slavchev]

Hello Dean,

1. You can either use a central license server machine and point all computers to obtain licenses from it, or you can have a license server installed on each computer, provided you use online licenses.
I prefer a central license server since it generates less traffic inside the network, also it's easier to borrow licenses.
See https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...d+Installation
and
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...cense+Settings

2. If you have 3dsMax installed on the computers - you can use "Workstation" on all machines. "Standalone render slave" can be used only with V-Ray GPU when rendering from 3dsMax

3. If he works from home he can install a license server on his local machine and obtain licenses from there, provided that you use online licensing.

[Deaner777]

Ivan, Thank you for your reply!

For the user who is working from home, could he not just point V-ray to look at the IP address of the server? Or do they need to be on the same network for that to work? If it would work like that, is there and advantage or disadvantage to doing that?

Could you please explain render nodes and when to use them?

Dean

[Morbid Angel]

You can point to an external IP just fine. The license server if behind router or firewall must allow the port for license server to been seen to the outside world. If that is setup then it will work fine.