DR Problem

[reality3d]

Hi all,
wondering if anyone has any ideas on this,
I am DRendering an A3 image, it seems to do the light cals fine as a DR, but once it starts actually rendering it drops the servers, and only the source machine actually renders. All seems to work fine on smaller files, it's only these more complex shots (They take 24hrs to render on a single AMD 4200 X2) that I seem to have this problem.
Thanks heaps.

[jujubee]

What do you mean by 'it drops the servers.' Ie. - materials don't show up, error messages, buckets don't appear, buckets appear black?

[mmikee]

I have also had this before. On very large stills...3000k range...all the computers compute the IR. Then when the actual render starts ,only the main computer renders. I dont get errors in the log, but the other computers just never start rendering. This has only happened to me twice before, but it was strange. Fortunately the IR computation was the bulk of rendering time.

Just my 2 cents,
Mike

[meanadam]

I get this too. Seems to be a problem with the Autosave features of the IRR map. Did you have Autosave on?

[mmikee]

I did not have auto save checked. hmm.....

[jujubee]

It can be a number a whole bunch of reasons that cause this but in order to help, we need a better description of the symptoms.

From personal experience, 90% of all DR problems in recent builds have been related to Windows networking.

The other 10% related to Vray/Max usually fall into the following:

1) UNC paths not used.
2) Bucket Mode used causing slightly discolored buckets.
3) IES lights used in DR.
4) Stopping/restarting a render too quickly.
5) Max running on the same machine as the shared texture drive - throttling the network and causing disconnects - use a low-priority script in this situation. Better yet, don't run Max on a dedicated texture machine.

[RErender]

I think it is "increment on save" not autoback that is the issue with DR.

[Jerry]

We once had more max-versions on 1 pc, which caused the DR to 'crash'.

Now all pc's have max7 installed. All goes well, except for 1 model...... i also get the black buckets..grrrr

[reality3d]

Hi sorry not to answer , been off line.
Yeah I am getting the problem that mmikee described.
I am not actually doing any saving or incrementing of the IR maps.
It's just that once the final light calcs are completed, only the server machine renders, the others just sit idle. this only happens on renders where the output is over a certain size.

[dellis]

I hate to say it...feel kinda stupid about it. But i didn't start the vray spawner app on the slaves and that was it for me! I shoulda read the help file first.

Don;t know if this is whats going on for you but...

[mmikee]

The last time this happened to me, I saved the IR and LC and then loaded them before rendering. Then I restarted the spawners and all the machines rendered fine. Not sure what the problem was.
BTW, this has only happened to me 3 times. DR has been 99 % awesome.
And being able to save the IR/LC is a godsend !

Off topic...any way to asign how much of the render is done by each machine, like in % or something ?

Regards,
Mike

[jujubee]

Off topic...any way to asign how much of the render is done by each machine, like in % or something ?

That would be real cool. Wishlist somebody!

Back on topic. Is the drive you have your textures on also running Max/DR?

[reality3d]

Nah,
It just sits there doing not much at all.

[jujubee]

Lightcache doesn't DR and IR does calc with DR in beta builds. Since it works on smaller files, I am going to assume that it has something to do with file size at larger renders. Your network could be bottle-necking.

How big are these saved maps?