Lost Buckets - Distrubted Rendering

[calvino56]

I'm working on an interior animation and am loosing buckets from the 4 (dual xeons) render servers after the first frame. I have doors opening so I have my Irradiance map set to single frame. The message is, warning: Render host 10.1.0.31(.32,.33,.34) failed.
I use Max 7, Vray 1.47.03 on a Windows netowrk environment. It's obviously finding the servers, the first frame shows 20 buckets pulling for my deadline, then they all fail and I'm stuck with just the four from the render client, my workstation.
I've tried putting the name of the render servers and the ip of the render servers in the DR window - same thing happens.
I saw on this post that Pixelperfectg had the same problem.
http://new.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...c49fdb97a76c5f
Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope!

[percydaman]

i wouldn't count on DR working on animations. Its just not a good idea and I dont know why people do it anyways. Just use backburner...

[natty]

Dr doesnt work for animations ... it will render the first frame then on the second the slaves will drop off .....

[calvino56]

Thing is, when I use Backburner for the animations I get a little flickering because every machine calc's the gi slightly different.
Its really too bad DR doesn't work for animations, that's really dissapointing.

[percydaman]

calculate your irradiance map on one machine...no flickering

[RErender]

but he has moving doors...

[natty]

Can you not render out your door sequences as separate files?

[percydaman]

oic....im doing the same that at this exact moment. What I have is an opening door at the beginning of the sequence. Ive rendered it single frame on one machine.. (had to bite the bullet on that one) for all frames that the door was moving.

And rendered same entire sequence with add to current map but the door wasn't animated. When it was all done I just substituted the door not animated frames with the door animated frames.

Is it perfect? nope, but it looks pretty close and Ill warrant the client will never know the difference.

[vlado]

If you want to try an internal build that supports DR for animations, you can email me at vlado@chaosgroup.com

Best regards,
Vlado

[natty]

Yeah ..thats the best way to get around the problem ..

[percydaman]

are you talking my way or vlados way...hahaha

[calvino56]

Yep, thats same conclusion i've resorted to - rendering the frames with the doors opening separately.
It would still be nice if DR supported animation better, and an explanation of why it doesn't work would be appreciated as well.
Thanks for the answers and suggestions.

<edit> I sent you an e-mail Vlado, thanks!

[natty]

.... well i wouldnt call it your way perc .. lolol .. but yes

[Da_elf]

hmm. should i be looking in my download section in my internal build section?

[percydaman]

.... well i wouldnt call it your way perc .. lolol .. but yes

hehe, I only called it my way so as to not be mistaken for what vlado said... though now that I think about it, I came up with this revolutionary new way of doing things without help from anyone else, so its mine and has been patented and will from now on be called: "Percy's way of doin sh!t."