"Could not use any of the selected (1) hosts for distributed rendering" - error (3ds Max 2019)

[JezUK]

DR was working for me, and now it isn't.

I tried to follow the advice given in the Docs page regarding Distributed Rendering for Phoenix, in particular the Mapped Drives and UNC Paths for Texture Maps part.

(https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...SpawnerAccount)

But when I tried to set up a "Log On account", the VRaySpawner service would then not start (with ./Administrator, or any named Admin User) - it would complain with a logon error (which I couldn't believe, nor rectify).

So I set things back to how they all were previously (i.e. when DR for a NON-Phoenix scene was working no problem, remember, I was trying in this instance to get a Phoenix scene to Distribute render, with no luck), but now DR doesn't work at all and I get the message, saying;

"Could not connect to host 10.0.0.5:20204: Connection Timeout"
"Could not use any of the selected (1) hosts for distributed rendering".

I tried pinging both computers on each computer and all the pinging worked.

Under Networks (in Windows 10 Explorer), both computers are visible, on each computer, and all mapped hard-disks can be seen, and accessed, again on both computers.

VRaySpawner (2019) is started on the Slave, the Licence Server details on it are all correct (for the IP for the Server, which has never changed).

And when I look online at my License Server details, the Dongle is attached, and everything is available and looking correct and as it should be with regards to how many licences I have, how many are used/unused/available etc.

Basically, everything looks correct, yet I get this error message now, for ANY scene (non-phoenix) whenever I now try to DR.

I'm at a loss.

Any help would be gratefully received.

Thanks.

[ivan.slavchev]

Using the "Administrator" user is not recommended for security reasons. Apart from that - you can check if there isn't more than one V-Ray spawner running at the same time on your machine. If there is and they use the same port (20204 by default) you'll have a problem with different spawners trying to take the port one from another/

Also - are the IP addresses of your render nodes static? Is it possible that 10.0.0.5 was assigned to another computer?
Can you see the spawner listening for render requests on port 20204 if you enter "netstat - an | findstr 20204" ins CMD ?

Another thing you can try is stopping the spawner service and starting the spawner manually to see if it'll work that way.
Regarding the error you get when trying to change the service user - it's hard to tell what the issue is, an error can be caused by another process occupying the port, or by incorrect username/password or if the user has no permissions to run services in Windows security policy (the latest is not very likely).

[JezUK]

Hi Ivan,

Thanks for your detailed reply.

I contacted Chaosgroup and Tashko helped me.

I believe it was stopping the spawner service and starting it manually that did the trick.

Many thanks.