Network rendering light cache and irradiance map?

[TERRA Operative]

I seem to have a bit of a problem with network rendering.

I have a flythrough to render and am trying to use the light cache and irradiance map. I'm using 3D Max 2010 x64 with Backburner and am wondering if there is any way to split these maps across multiple machines without getting the flickering effect.

I have to render multiple 100 frame animations at 1080P and having to wait for a single machine to render these elements before the main render pass is not going to be pretty, especially seeing as due to geometry and material changes, they will have to be recalculated for each animation.

I just tried to render a 600 frame walk through, but Backburner timed out with an error after 600 minutes on the first light cache pass (the timeout time has now been extended), but if I could spread these elements across our 4 machines, it would be a lot better for our deadlines.....


Any tricks to do this?

[squeakybadger]

are you skipping any frames?

slow camera's i can usually do evey 15-20 frames, and after the first frame the next in the sequence renders in a fraction of the time.

[3DMK]

I seem to have a bit of a problem with network rendering.



I just tried to render a 600 frame walk through, but Backburner timed out with an error after 600 minutes on the first light cache pass (the timeout time has now been extended), but if I could spread these elements across our 4 machines, it would be a lot better for our deadlines.....


Any tricks to do this?

Max has a 600 minute timeout set by default. Simply change it in the backburner settings as you submit the job to anything you like, or even turn the timeout off all together.

Cheers

[TERRA Operative]

I've fixed that time out thing, and all is rendering happily now.


I'm now just looking for a way to split the pre passes across machines. For the irradiance map, I'm doing every 10th frame, but the light cache is what's killing me at the moment.

Am I stuck to one machine, or is there a trick I can use to spread across multiple machines?

[TRGraphics]

All the machines compute the light cache but only the host machines ouput is actually used. This has been a request for quite some time to be able to DR light cache.