Do you use DR?

[TRGraphics]

DR is one of the best features vray has, when it works. Spend some time perfecting it and I will be a very happy person!

[dlparisi]

How many times can I answer "All the time"??? Seriously, I use it constantly (over 6 DR machines) and have very little trouble with it. I'd be so less productive without it. The only problem I have with it is that if I put the main workstation (that also has the license server) in standby, the dr slaves will stop working. In these cases I simply kill the 3dsmax process under the vrayspawner and a new one is started and everything is good. I've only noticed this happening on the latest builds though it could have been there before too.

[devin]

We use DR all day long for test renderings but because it sometimes drops buckets or some of the buckets loose textures I use BB to render out the final image because it's more reliable. Also on large scenes it's very slow to start but that is probably the networks fault, it doesn’t matter because it's invaluable for daily work.

[miraldo]

Since Vray 1.5, DR is very reliable for us. It also worked well on previous versions, but it required quite a lot of spawner restarts when dealing with memory intensive scenes or high resolution renders.
Although we have experienced a few problems with DR, they mostly relate to using UNC paths for textures and proxies. It behaves flawlessly when we copy them locally to each machine.
With that said, we use it daily, and it represents an important boost to our productivity.

[palibebeh]

all the time.
I can't imagine my work without it any more.

one workstation + 3 dual quad core slaves.
no BB - direct DR for stills, command line rendering through batch files for animations and sequences.

no major problems, apart from occasional spawner shutdowns and compatibility issues (max mostly).

[Fekta.studio]

Same here, DR all day long, stills, anims...

[QuakeMarine1]

doing DR for animation is a waste of cpu time
all spawner must wait until the last bucket of the current frame is done
communication between master and spawner drains cpu power too - especialy if buckts are very small

DR is fine for GI bake animation cam fly
still image render

vlado
it whould be cool to have one "spawner" to support all vray appliactions
it is imho a good invest in the future onced vray run on several apps. DR
i not mean running DR from maya using cinema4d spawner
i mean maya DR starts and "spawner" starts the maya spawner
its "sick" to have separat spawner for 3dsmax 9 + 2008 + 2009 + maya 8.5 + maya 2008 + cinema 11 ...
guess you get me


further more
print warning or error DR if master Vray version is different to spawner Vray version
and
print warning or error DR if master region settings is set to "," but spawner use "."

most DR error and problems are related to the points abouve

my 2 cents

[stevesideas]

Yep, I use DR all the time also. DR is fantastic for stills...the more cpus, the quicker the render which must be a good thing !

[nlo]

miraldo, isn't copying all the files locally a little annoying? i have all textures, irrmaps, vray proxies, point caches, etc on my file server. are you doing this manually?

[miraldo]

miraldo, isn't copying all the files locally a little annoying? i have all textures, irrmaps, vray proxies, point caches, etc on my file server. are you doing this manually?

Well, to ease the burden of copying the files to each machine I create a batch file to automate the process.
For instance, if I want to update all Vrmaps on all slave machines:

 
copy *.vrmap \\slave01\work\
copy *.vrmap \\slave02\work\
copy *.vrmap \\slave03\work\
...

This way, every time I change or create a new a file, I just start the batch and everything is copied to each folder on the remote machines.

It does take a little more time than using UNC paths but, since I started using this method, I never got a "faulty" bucket anymore.

[vlado]

its "sick" to have separat spawner for 3dsmax 9 + 2008 + 2009 + maya 8.5 + maya 2008 + cinema 11 ...
guess you get me

Hehe, have you looked at how many mental ray satellite services you have installed But at least as far as 3ds Max is concerned, you can run the DR spawner for the latest 3ds Max version only. It will be able to process DR jobs from all previous 3ds Max versions too.

Best regards,
Vlado

[sfeely]

We use backburner all day long for still and animation. The spawner works for us sometimes but we would probably use it more if it were more tightly integrated with BB. I guess I have not used it because I'm a creature of habit and BB just works. Should I be using DR vs BB?
Why DR if BB works?

[Micha]

Hi, I use DR per Vray for Rhino daily. It's great, so easy to use. I like, that all textures are automatic send to the nodes or a shared folder (maybe it's a special VfR feature)

Two wishes:

* support of PPT and light cache calculation

* maybe it's possible to write a little tool, that watch the drspawner.exe and if it crash, a new one will be automatic started

[QuakeMarine1]

... you can run the DR spawner for the latest 3ds Max version only. It will be able to process DR jobs from all previous 3ds Max versions too.

Best regards,
Vlado

assuming max2009 64 bit spawner have all plugins for max9 32bit
if it whould be that easy ....
even max k9 64bit cant open a k9 32 bit scene without error
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/f...wthread/16350/

i could tell you stories ..

[dbuchhofer]

I Use it daily, and now that I'm finally beating in the wonders that is DR for test rendering to my coworkers, we could REALLY use some more feedback to see who is rendering using what machines. right now i've got something rigged up that writes out the username of the person who is using a machine if that machine is rendering for DR and a tiny app that can 'check' if the farm is busy.

more ties to backburner (Or at least, knowledge of whether BB is rendering) would be nice also, though i'd prefer if that is something that can be customized.. (in many cases using dr while rendering for backburner isn't a problem), just slower for both things but in most cases, the DR testing is going to be more important to an extent than the random frame that will finish overnight anyway.. except in rare cases.

Basically, if anyone has good ideas for how to make DR friendly to use in midsize studios that would be wonderful

I think something along the lines of a priority system that could be set up for users.. Flag X number of machines as prioritized for Y user, then you could allow Z user to use the full farm for all tests, but when Y user starts a rendering, then he takes back the X machines on render start, and picks up any others that open up as the rendering continues.. then i could just flag say.. 3 DR slaves per artist, and let everyone keep everything 'enabled' at all times, and at worst, an artist trying to send a job would have his machine and his 3 'prioritized' slaves.. at best, he grabs the whole farm..