Building a 40 node render farm - which Vray ?

[Adam H. Stewart]

I am building a 40 node renderfarm tomorrow and am currently using 1.09r - We are going to be installing on one machine and then ghosting that across the 40 nodes - so I need to make the decision - do I stick with my current version of Vray ? or go for something later ?

Thanks

[Dynedain]

If its any help, I'm running 1.46.15 (or is it 16?) on a 16 node farm. I'll be rolling out to 1.47.03 after this particular big, time-sensitive render job is finished.

[Mathew Everett]

version

I render over 9 machines and have the latest version of Vray with no issues. the only thing is that Vray "I think this is still true" only lets you use 10 Computers on a farm per license. So if they are all dual pro Intel’s you can only have 40 buckets....or single Intel’s with HT 20 buckets.... I have yet to find away to bypass this. Maybe someone else can give you better feedback about how many stations per license.....But the current version of Vray with Max 7.0 srv pk1 seems to run flawlessly for me. a few bugs with Max 7.5 but they were all just ironed out! in the new release...

[tom schuelke]

We are using Vray 1.4617, soon will switch to 1.4702 with about 16 computers. right now we got 4 licenses of vray,

no problems here.


Tom

[analogueWay]

VRay 1.46.10 on 5 single Xeon, hyperthreaded machines and 3 dual Xeon machines with hyperthreading disabled - no problems.

I will be upgrading to the latest version today or tomorrow.

[Sushidelic]

We're running the latest version on 35 rendernodes, all dual, and concerning Vray there are no issues at all. The only thing you got to organize carefully is the usual 3dmax - backburner - network stuff. It makes a lot of sense to have a common network plugin directory and also an environment path variable set on every machine to a folder containing the latest versions of vrayxxxx.dll and libmmb.dll, what makes the setup of new versions easy. If you've got any further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

edit: A wish to Vlado: would it be possible to distribute a non-installer package containing the vray files, as i always have to do a "dummy" install to an empty folder to get access to the files to be then copied to the specified network location - not a big worry indeed but it would be handsome to just unzip and copy in our case.

Regards,
Michael

[TomC]

edit: A wish to Vlado: would it be possible to distribute a non-installer package containing the vray files, as i always have to do a "dummy" install to an empty folder to get access to the files to be then copied to the specified network location - not a big worry indeed but it would be handsome to just unzip and copy in our case.

I second this one .

[Adam H. Stewart]

Thanks Guys

Thanks as always for you insight and tips. The farm is going to be mixed platform - Lightwave, Maya, Max and we are going to be using Deadline to organize rendering for us. There are three animators here, I use 3ds mainly with the occasional forray into Maya - one is pure 3ds and the other a Maya, Lightwave guy (lightwave) we are planning to gather everything to a single server - files, textures, projects and render back to the same folder.

The IT guy recommending doing a ghost (not sure if it is an application term or technical term) across the many machines. Basically copy one drives set-up to the other machines. A common plug in directory is very interesting. Maybe you could go into a bit more detail.
So I have a common plug-in directory living on the server and all the plug-in's are loaded from there ? So if I want to update I only have to replace that file ? or will I still need to do an install to the 40 machines ?

I really want to get this right as loading software unto 40 machines VNC is not joke. By the way anybody been using the new dreamscape and or Afterburn - what do you think ? Haven't installed yet.

P.S.
I am presuming from your positive responses that the latest version of Vray is the one I should be using ? - you know how things can sometimes progress backwards mid development. I am curious about the 10 node render limit per Vray license - I am presuming this is for Bucket rendering a single frame ? I forgot all about that feature - because it doesn't work in my version of Vray. Does it require a seperate render app or does it magically work by clicking a button ?

Thanks again as always this forum rocks.

[ralf_al]

Another way of handling plugin updates over multiple machines is writing a small batch file that copies all required files automatically to all of your render machines. This way you don´t have the extra network traffic every time max starts up.

Writing this batch might be a bit tricky initially, since for some plugins it´s not enough to copy only the plugins folder (vray for example), but once you have everything up and running, updating the farm with new plugin versions is a snap. Works great over here with 15 machines.

Using diskimages (ghosts) for the initial setup of the machines is always a good idea. Makes things much easier.

[Mathew Everett]

10 Comps per Lic. for Render Farms? Valdo is this true still

I have had heard only about the 10 Computer issue when Vray was first released.....Maybe Valdo Can shed light on that issue.... But I do think you have a limit of 10 Computers per License.....for Network rendering.


To get Vray working over the network just have to run the Vray spawner on the farm. The hard part is getting them to turn off and on or if you cancel you have to reset the spawner. "which is found in the Max directory once you install Vray!"




here is also a nifty utility that will allow you to start and stop and reset your servers for Vray.......Thanks to Dynedain I found this Post

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/foru...ight=dr+script

also Ghosting your drivers is a smart way to do things, I dont know much about the updates on that but I do know I have ghosted drives and had a good outcome... Maybe someone else can comment on the Live Plug-in folder...

If you have any furthur questions please feel free to shoot me an E-mail mat17_01@hotmail.com . I will try to help as much as possible...

[Dynedain]

I have had heard only about the 10 Computer issue when Vray was first released.....Maybe Valdo Can shed light on that issue.... But I do think you have a limit of 10 Computers per License.....for Network rendering.

There are 2 different "10 Computer" issues.

Vray: If you want to do Distributed Rendering (where multiple machines are working simultaneously on the same frame), the Vray license limits you to 10. There is no limit on normal backburner network rendering.

Windows: Windows workstation can only accept a maximum of 10 different incoming connections, so if you have more machines than that, your fileserver and/or backburner manager need to be running on Windows server. (The Vray license restriction may be in part related to this, but I don't know - ask vlado)

[Buck]

Where is the "10 computer limit" layed out? When I look in the online manual, I see this:

"Before you can use the distributed rendering option, you must determine the machines that will take part in the computations. Both 3dsmax and VRay need to be properly installed on those machines, although they don't need to be authorized."

Saying that the VRay installs on the rendering machines don't need to be authorized. I take that as meaning it is unlimited. Or am I taking this incorrectly?

I would like a solid answer on this, the studio I am about to start working for is going to be using VRay, and they have a 100 CPU render Farm. How many licenses need to be purchased?

[RErender]

Where is the "10 computer limit" layed out? When I look in the online manual, I see this:

"Before you can use the distributed rendering option, you must determine the machines that will take part in the computations. Both 3dsmax and VRay need to be properly installed on those machines, although they don't need to be authorized."

Saying that the VRay installs on the rendering machines don't need to be authorized. I take that as meaning it is unlimited. Or am I taking this incorrectly?

I would like a solid answer on this, the studio I am about to start working for is going to be using VRay, and they have a 100 CPU render Farm. How many licenses need to be purchased?

One, if you all are good at sharing, or One per artist that needs to be using it at the same time. Each license in use can utilize 10 farm boxes for DR at any given time. If rendering using backburner then all 100 servers can run in slave mode without any more licenses.

[Buck]

So using backburner, with one authorized license the rest could still run in "server" mode with backburner? This could be done for DR on a single still image, as well as DR for animations? (each CPU or group of 2-4 CPUs taking on one frame)

I'm not sure how many licenses we will have, I know that I will have one, but I'm not sure that anyone else will be using VRay.

Thanks for clearing that up!

Daniel

[Adam H. Stewart]

Backburner computer limit

I don't have personal experience of this but I have heard that backburner has issues on farms over 15 or so machines. As some of you have posted saying they have no problems above that number - maybe it is an issue that has now been solved.
So I think I am going to do an intial common plug-in directory test to see if there are lag issues. I wish I knew more about scripting to write some code to allow me to update the farm that sounds sweet.
The main problem is I have too many damn plug-in's and they are always upgrading - i.e. Afterburn 3.2, Dreamscape 2.5 I also have the now defunct Turbo Tool Kit 2 ( changed into a whole host of smaller packages ) Power Boolean, Simbiont - the list goes on and on. It is the worst feeling in the world to shoot something off to the farm and then get the missing .dll error message.
Another question - we have two licenses of vray - there in another 3ds artist - does this mean I can render on 20 machines (single frame that is)

Thanks Again - I am sure I'll be back for more help once I get into the nitty gritty. On another topic I am going to E3 tomorrow for a sneak peak at the latest release of 3ds code named Vesper. If you are on support you probably got the same e-mail. I am really excited but have to remember the NDA they made me sign so will not be able to share what new 3ds magic is waiting us in the fall.