Distribute Vray RC2 in a Server Farm?

[k-arts]

Is there a less painful way to install the new vray build rc2 in a server farm then just to install them manually on each computer ?

cheers

ralf

[vlado]

At present, no. We are working on having the installer also work from the command line, if that would be of any help.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Dynedain]

Command line switches would be great! (as I requested in the wishlist ) That way you can add the install to a .bat script, making installation on many machines soooo much easier.

Both the MSI installer package and the Nullsoft installer package have support for command-line switches. I'm not sure what you guys are using. Great to hear you're looking into it though!

[Da_elf]

maybe on the installer you can type in the ip addresses you want to install to hehehe. that would be cool. and you tell the installer where the liscence dongle will be plugged into so it will install vray on all slaves then point them all to the dongle computer.

[Dynedain]

maybe on the installer you can type in the ip addresses you want to install to hehehe. that would be cool. and you tell the installer where the liscence dongle will be plugged into so it will install vray on all slaves then point them all to the dongle computer.

I don't think telling the installer which IP to install to would work, because that would require something to be already installed on the target machine to accept the incoming installation request.

Also, I don't think it's necessary to have a paramater telling the slaves where the dongle is. I believe the WIBU drivers can search that out on their own. That's how it works for the other WIBU-enabled software that we already have in the office.

[Da_elf]

oh. on my slave i didnt bother installing the drivers

[instinct]

i wrote a distribution app for plugins on a farm a while back. it worked by simply copying over needed files wich should be enough for slaves....should be a piece of cake for anyone to write...and that's one button distribution :P

Thorsten

[Dynedain]

i wrote a distribution app for plugins on a farm a while back. it worked by simply copying over needed files wich should be enough for slaves....should be a piece of cake for anyone to write...and that's one button distribution :P

Thorsten

That's been a solution in the past... but it's a pain trying to remember all the files that go with any particular plugin.

[Druski]

we have been trialing a central plugin repositry, seems to work ok. However you still need these three files in the max root:

vray60.dll
libmmd.dll
cgauth60.dll

Just copy them from the 3dsmax root directory after you install the workstation license. These files will then be required on each node. You can then make a custom plugin.ini file which will tell each render node to look at the network plugins folder.

it should look something like this:

[Directories]
Additonal_Plugins=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsMax8\plugins
V-Ray main plug-ins= "Network Path"
V-Ray additional plug-ins= "Network Path"

These are the respective plugins:

vray main:

vrayraw60.bmi
vrender60.dlr

vray additional: "plugins contained with 3dsmax8/plugins/vrayplugins/"

"Very important that the main plugins load before the additonal ones"

I believe farm management systems like Deadline allow you to specify a custom plugin.ini file at rendertime, but that unfortunetly that still does not fix the vray problem. Hopefully 3dsmax implements a feature like this in the future, and vray will no longer require the files in the max root.

Drew

[Sushidelic]

Add the path to the networkfolder containing the vray dll's to your computer's´environment, best in first place in the path variable. Don't forget to place the updated libmmb.dll there as well. Works like a charm, everything is centralised then.

Best regards,
Michael

[Druski]

Add the path to the networkfolder containing the vray dll's to your computer's´environment

What do you mean exactly, by the computer's environement?

[Sushidelic]

Oops, just missed the reply...
First, you move all vray relevant dll's from maxroot (vray60.dll, libmmd.dll, cgauth.dll) to a network folder accesible to all machines. Then, you add this folder to the windows path of all your workstations - I mean the Windows OS path variable, so it's not max related, but max will look for missing dll's in the system path entries. Be sure to remove all dlls mentioned above locally.

Regards, Michael

[Dynedain]

We haven't done the networked plugin directory because a lot of plugins (like speedtree, simbiotmax, realflow, easyNat...) like to install things like license managers elsewhere on the system. So even if you have a network plugin folder, you still need to run the installer on each machine and point it at the network plugin folder instead of the default max plugin folder.

[Druski]

I think you'll find that most of those plugins only require the plugin to render, the licensing only needs to be present on the workstation

Drew

[instinct]

many dont need the licensing installed, but rely on a bunch of files to be present. (like dreamscape and afterburn need the tsregisternow.dll in max root etc).

Thorsten