DR w Backburner - what i learned

[gregory mertens]

quick info to those who may be trying this:

1) it would be nice to have a complete tutorial somewhere on bb/dr setup
2) if you run bb as a service make sure that the CFG you create (with the render node names) exists under the login name for the bb service.
3) bb does not need to be running on the computers that are dr nodes
4) bb does need to be running on the computer that will control the dr nodes
5) vray spawner does need to be running on the dr nodes
6) vray spawner does not need to be running on the computer that controls the dr nodes.


...gregory

[Clifton Santiago]

Thanks. But what is the actual procedure? I just tried a couple days ago with sp1, but no luck.

I selected all the nodes I wanted to do the DR in the vray settings. I sent the file to backburner and selected just the host node machine. I assumed that it would then send the file to all the other nodes specifed, however it only rendered it locally on the host node. Am I doing something wrong?

[gregory mertens]

It should render it on the machine that you selected, and it sounds like it did. So that's a good start.

I would take these steps.

bb_comp = computer you submited the back burner job to
vr_comps = computers that you want the bb_comp to use for dr

1) Make sure that the cfg file on bb_comp is set to use all the vr_comps.

2) Run max on the bb_comp and make sure that dr works (without bb).

3) Make sure that Vray spawner is running on all vr_comps.

once you know that works,

4) Make sure you selected "distributed rendering" before submitting the job to bb. It should work.

Let me know if that does not make sense or does not work.

...gregory

[Clifton Santiago]

Okay, I think I all those conditions apply. I will probably try again tomorrow. Thanks.

[Clifton Santiago]

Okay, I understand your sequence except for:

2) Run max on the bb_comp and make sure that dr works (without bb).

The node I am sending to is only a node. It is not a workstation so I only have the slave or core version of Max and Vray installed. As such, I can't login to that machine to open Max and see if it can DR directly from it.

One of the benefits of DR/BB should be that we can do DR, while continueing to work on our current workstation. I hope I can get it to work exclusively on nodes...

[gregory mertens]

You can run the core max on a render station (unlicensed) for up to 30 days. Vray would have to be configured to look at the vray license server.

That aside, verify for me the you have set up a cfg file on the bb_comp. If that bb_comp is running as a service, you have to set up the cfg under the login name that the service uses.

...gregory

[Clifton Santiago]

Okay, I understand what you mean now. I had to log into the target host node, as the 3d admin user that we have the nodes set up to run DR on. Then open Max (which I didn't think you could do because it is an unregistered node core install of max), and specify which nodes you want the host node to send to. These settings are user specific.

It appears to be working now, and I'll see how it turns out in the morning. Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Aaron

[gregory mertens]

glad you got it working. Now that you have that figured out, you don't have to actually open max on each computer to register the vr nodes. Just edit the text file that stores them. I noticed from some prior posts that it is located in different spots depending on your install, but mine is here:

C:\Documents and Settings\{user name}\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsmax\2008 - 32bit\enu\plugcfg\vray_dr.cfg

it's a pretty straight forward system. Computer name plus 1 if on, 0 if off. Look at one that is set up already and it will make sense.

...gregory