Rendering Farm - Where do you start?

[Saulman]

I want to start rendering across a network using several machines. I've run a search on both this site and through google but there seems to be conflicting views, and some of the stuff out there is dated. I know that there will be people who visit here who have the answers.

I have 2 high spec machines which run Vray. I have another 4 hi-spec machines at my disposal but do not have Vray. I also have around 40 lower spec machines available if I need them but with no 3D software.

Is it possible to use all this power? Or can I only render on the Vray machines? Is there a tutorial for this available? Or a VRAY Net Rendering bible?

I apologise if these questions have already been asked a million times, and people are sick of answering them, but I did run a search but without the necessary knowledge, I'm not even sure what I'm looking for.

I am aware of backburner but I don't know exactly what it's capable off and if it will help me in this situation. Are there other methods?

Any help on this (or links to help) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Saul

[instinct]

Step 1 : Install Max with backburner on all 44 machines without licensing it (not needed for backburner rendering)
Step 2 : Install Vray on all 44 machines
Step 3 : Launch the Manager on one machine (should have a rather bi HD as all scene files will be copied there)
Step 4 : launch the server (wich is the actual renderclient) on all machines (Best put into autostart)
Step 5 : launch monitor on your workstation....to monior the farm
Step 6 : render away :P

Thorsten

[joconnell]

Heya Saul,

You can install 3dsmax on any computer you want for rendering, it just won't be an interactive license so if you want you can install max on all 44 other machines. Vray advanced comes with 10 network render licenses each time you buy one interactive license so you'll be able to render with vray on another 10 machines with no problems - most other max plugins generally come with free network rendering so install these plugins but don't authorize them.

You'll need to make one drive letter on a central server shared and visible to all of the machines that you plan to network render on. Use this drive letter to store your max projects, textures and all other resources that you need to render a scene. Make sure that every single computer you plan to render with uses the exact same mapped drive letter so for example if you use the windows map network drive command and assign the letter z: to that drive on all the computers. When making your scenes in max you browse to your z drive when picking textures and file output paths etc.

Backburner has three parts two it, the manager, server and monitor. The manager is the part of the setup that will assign frames to each of the machiens you network render. When you submit a job to backburner, it will check all of the frames it needs to render, assign a single frame to each computer and start them rendering. When a computer has finished rendering a frame, it reports back to the manager that the frame is done and the manager assigns a new frame to it. The server is the program you run on each of the slave rendering computers - it reports itself to backburners manager as a computer to be used in network rendering.

The backburner monitor is the last part - it's an interface for you to check the progress of jobs, see how many frames are rendered, see if any machines are reporting errors and change the priority of jobs. Say for example you have a max scene file with four cameras, you would set up a camera to render, set its output path to the z: drive you setup earlier and tick on network render. when you hit render, you submit the job to backburner and give it a priority. Then you set up the next camera, set a new output path and filename and submit that camera and so on. If you need to see one of the cameras render first, you can use the monitor to change the priority of that particular cameras job in backburner so that it gets assigned to the render machines first.

It's not too hard to setup and well worth it!

[Saulman]

Wow!!! That was fast. I really hope it's that easy.

Thanks Thorsten.

EDIT: ....... and joconnell

I've just spent ages trawling to find that stuff. Really very much appreciated. Thanks.

[instinct]

Actually Vray with Backburner is not limited at all...only DR rendering is limited to 10 machines. So if you do max's slicing for stills or anims then only sky is the limit :P

[3ddesign]

For those of us who work on large (32 x 40 x 300dpi) singe renderings, does backburner offer any advantages over DR? I used to use backburner to render strips, but found that most of my time was spent rendering the IR file. The actual image render went much faster in comparison. So I switched to DR which seemed to speed up the process considerably. Am I missing something here?

I am in the process of upgrading from Viz 2005 to Max 8. I have 10 dedicated render computers (running Win Server 2000) and two XP workstations (w/ 2 licenses of Viz and Vray). Since Max doesn't run under Server 2000 (so I've been told), it looks like I have to reload everything. So I want to make sure I do it right. Please, if anyone has experience with a similar configuration, please share what you've done to make it as efficient as possible.

Thanks. Craig

[instinct]

DR still has serious issues with hanging MAX (eating memory and not reacting anymore) for us it's just not practical as we mostly do anims. I did a custom tool to kill the max processes and such...but it's a hassle somewhat. For instance it will hang if you hit render and got isolated selection....and even tho i KNEW that this would cause the DR slaves to hang it happened all the time accidently as i isolate so much :P

Thorste

[Dynedain]

Setting up network rendering using backburner:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...linkID=5573345

[gilpo]

For the ins and outs of a generic Max render farm (not v-ray specific), check out this guide:

http://www.3dv.com/images/down_on_the_farm.pdf

I used it when I first set ours up and it was a tremendous help. There's a lot of in-depth information on the why's and how's of the whole process. Other than what's in that guide, just put v-ray on all the machines and any plugins that you use in your scenes.

This all mainly applies to rendering animations but we've used strip rendering through backburner extensively. It a great substitute for DR when you have to render a lot of really large stills and want to use your computer to work at the same time. We primarily use DR for testing our images and settings before we send them to the farm.

Good luck!

[3ddesign]

Thanks for the replies. Down on the Farm was my bible for setting up my farm. I guess the real question I have is the pros and cons of using DR vs. Backburner for Large Still Images. I don't do any animation. I've been working under the assumption that Vray cannot calculate the Lighting through backburner. Is this still the case? Also, I work on very complex scenes: lots of lights, lots of faces, lots of glossies, lots of falloff, etc. A lighting calculation can take hours, thus I use DR for this part of the process. And since I've already got it all set up, I do the final render with DR as well. Am I doing things backwards?

Craig

[Dynedain]

craig, you can go about it the way you are... the only benefit backburner has over your method, is that if you use Render Strips (split scanline) you cut down on the memory needed to render each piece... which means for very large renderings, less chance of max crashing becuase of running out of memory.

And it has the benefit of not losing everything if one or more machines crash... unlike DR.

[rjw]

question-
When rendering a large image, would there be a speed benefit from -

Sending a render to BB with render final image ticked off just to calculate the IR and LC maps, and saving them on completion.
Then send the image to BB with strip rendering using these pre calculated maps.

I guess the only problem is the 2nd render can't begin until the 1st is complete. I'd like to send them and go home for the evening, any ideas?

How would this compare to just sending to BB with strips and each strip calculating the maps?

I've not tried this just wanted to test the logic on you all

Thanks,
Richard

[instinct]

You can set dependencies in the netrender dialogue...that way you can tell bb to wait with a job till another is done...

Thorsten

[ene.xis]

You can set dependencies in the netrender dialogue...that way you can tell bb to wait with a job till another is done...

Thorsten

exactly!

[rjw]

cool,

any thoughs on the rest of the logic?
thanks