Working remotely

[jacksc02]

My experience with working remotely is a positive one. I use anydesk to view my office workstation and it works really well even for modelling. Sometimes there is a bit of lag (very rarely) and if it does get annoying it is quick and easy to transfer files and work locally.

[^Lele^]

In light of the current worldwide health situation, this has come up as an issue for us. Serving files is one thing and could be done via secure FTP, but what about licensing? Is it feasible move our license servers to an offsite cloud instance or something?

I use the office's licenses simply through a windows VPN connection.

[DanSHP]

My experience with working remotely is a positive one. I use anydesk to view my office workstation and it works really well even for modelling. Sometimes there is a bit of lag (very rarely) and if it does get annoying it is quick and easy to transfer files and work locally.

When you log in remotely, do you have any issues with a rendering image being full white in the VFB? and the VFB being unresponsive?

[jacksc02]

When you log in remotely, do you have any issues with a rendering image being full white in the VFB? and the VFB being unresponsive?

No issues like that at all

[^Lele^]

When you log in remotely, do you have any issues with a rendering image being full white in the VFB? and the VFB being unresponsive?

No, but it's likely down to the kind of video drivers used for the connection.
Plain and simple windows remote desktop seems to work the best so far.
On the note of slowdowns, turn off viewport progressive rendering in Max, or it'll bring your connection to its knees.
With that off, i can work decently fine in max at 1440p.
The kind of updates the VFB pushes, even with progressive rendering, are generally a lot less frequent than that of the max VP.
Ofc, if you turn on one denoise update for each pass (ie. update rate of 100) you can likely run into trouble with lesser connections.

[danio]

I had been trying a variety of options (RDP with and without VPN, chrome RDP, etc.) but ended up settling on Teamviewer. I've got cable internet at the office and home (300 down, 10-15 up) and with progressive improvements in Max viewport turned off I have almost zero lag. Biggest issue is color dithering. Teamviewer used to be prohibitively expensive for me but they now have a license that's good for small businesses. I love it and it comes to about $15 a month. Just my $0.02 to anyone out there needing to do remote desktop.

[lbpalm]

Using Hamachi.
Works well & reliable thus far.
12 render nodes connected to office & home workstations.
Either workstation is added to the render.

Some overhead transferring assets but not too bad all things considered.

[dean_dmoo]

My experience with working remotely is a positive one. I use anydesk to view my office workstation and it works really well even for modelling. Sometimes there is a bit of lag (very rarely) and if it does get annoying it is quick and easy to transfer files and work locally.

Does anydesk automatically configure the remote monitors to the local setup? Were using chrome remote desktop but with 2 local monitors with a lower resolution vs 3 remote monitors with a higher resolution its a pita. I'm always having to use the scroll bars to move around my desktop. I know the windows remote desktop did it the otherway round (3 local vs 2 remote monitors) but haven't got that set up due to remote network setting issues.

Maybe anydesk does fix this?

To answer the OT, i have a copy of the server locally (same path setup) and just transfer files to and from when needed. Not optimal but seeing as Im at the office more than home its fine. Also the cloud services just don't seem financially viable looking at the amount of data in the library vs what actively gets used per project and can just be sent. Same goes for backups tbh. But we're a small firm so that makes it easier.

[trinity3d_cg]

I use the office's licenses simply through a windows VPN connection.

Yes, same here. We bought a hardware firewall a while back - A Dell Sonicwall that cost about $500. It has a VPN functionality included that came in really handy for having our animators work remotely. It's just like they are on the network for licensing, files, submitting jobs to rendering on BackBurner, etc. This might be a good solution for those of you that are ready to have a VPN functionality on your office network.
here's one on ebay that is similar
Jim

[^Lele^]

Ah, nice tip Jim!
I should also add that being able to borrow licenses locally for short periods of time is a boon: particularly in high-duty situations, connections may drop, and you really do not want to be shutting your working session(s) down with a save that is a few hours old...

[narsov]

I also work remotely. I do modelling and painting locally (to minimize lag) and everything else can be done on my workstation at the studio which I connect to via VPN (and over which I also get all my licenses and access to the production server). I noticed that different apps seem to perform differently for people I talked to. RemoteDesktop works best for me, others prefer Teamviewer and some swear on AnyDesk (even for modelling on the remote machine).
What definitely helps is a way to clone a job onto your local machine and sync your work with the production server - I'm using TotalCommander but this is more of a semi-manual task, which is not the best option if you need to sync more often.

I am using also Remote Desktop, but do you have any limitation with some apps because of the GPU? Windows remote desktop disables the GPU because of the traffic issues and the high data of the GPU and some apps that are GPU based (like substance painter) are not even starting.

[racoonart]

narsov In the meantime I have switched over to AnyDesk & Parsec which are both working phenomenally with none of the issues. However, Nvidia recently "unlocked" their non-quadro cards for remote desktop streaming, you should take a look at that . Should solve the RDP issues as far as I know.
https://cgpress.org/archives/nvidia-...orce-gpus.html

[narsov]

racoonart Thanks! I didn't know about Nvidia update.

[themaxxer]

I am switching from windows remote to parsec, it's a free remote solution initially made for stream gaming, but it's so fast and also can be used with 3ds max and windows desktop. I have to test it more in depth, but it seems very powerful.

[glorybound]

I just tried PARSEC and it crashed MAX when I disconnected from the remote computer. No thank you!