Groundwiz and DR problem

[dlparisi]

I'm trying to use Groundwiz to scatter vray proxy plants and groundcover across a scene. Setting everything up is working great but I'm having problems when I try to render it using DR. Basically the main workstation renders it fine, the DR nodes however take several minutes to start contributing to the scene (even with just a very basic groundwiz setup of one instanced proxy teapot). I've been emailing gugila groundwiz tech suport to see what the problem might be and so far we haven't found anything wrong. Here's my latest email to them:

Unfortunately I'm still seeing a slowdown when rendering using DR in VRay. Even if the planter object contains just one instance the nodes are still very slow to start (the main workstation starts working on it immediately though). The problem only pops up when using the Instancing Shader on a Vray proxy object (even a simple proxy of a cube). Basically the render nodes will take about 1-2 minutes to start working on the scene (even with the one instance) and then render out just fine. If I look at the Vray messages window, each node reports "Scene loaded, starting render." but the "Starting frame 0" message doesn't show up until the minute or two later at which point rendering proceeds. If I look at the processor usage on the rendernodes prior to the "Starting frame 0" message the processor is basically at 0% but once the "Starting frame 0" message shows up it rockets up to ~100%. If I render the same basic setup but with a regular max object and the Merging Shader, all nodes start rendering almost immediately using DR. I also tried rendering the test scene using backburner and everything works fine using that, an instancing shader with proxies starts redering on each node in about 10-12 seconds to start working on the image. While I could set up the scene without using proxies, I'd quickly run out of RAM for a normal scene since I'm normally instancing trees and plants. I'm running Max 9 x64, Vray 1.5sp4, 8GB on workstation and rendernodes are 4GB. I have the windows firewall and virus prot. turned off on all of the machines. Any ideas?

So I've narrowed the problem down to something with the Instancing Shader of Groundwiz (necessary to render the proxies) but I'm just looking if anyone else is having problems with this. I'm trying to figure out if it's a Groundwiz problem, a vray problem or something wrong on my end.

[RSF]

Hi
You're not the only one, I have the same problem.
GW takes forever to start rendering when using DR.
It pratically hangs at "NOTIFY PRE_RENDER".
Maybe some license server issue because while waiting(hanged) the nodes don't appear in the list.

[dlparisi]

Are you on the same version as me? Max 9x64, Vray 1.5sp4, GW 1.6. I've also been testing it on Max 2009 with sp3 and am not running into this problem (at least not as bad). I'm going to try sp4a on 2009 and see how it goes. Also, where and when does the "Notify Pre-render" message appear? I don't see that message.

UPDATE: sp4a on 2009 seems OK - basically the same as sp3. Still trying to figure it out in max9 though. I uninstalled and reinstalled max 9 to get a fairly clean install, installed sp4a and GW 1.6 and am still getting the long delay so I have no idea what's causing the hiccup.

[RSF]

Hi.
I'm using max2009 64bit and sp4a
The "Notify Pre-render" message appear in the vraylog on each node.
You can use a specific software to see log changes in realtime.
I'm using the freeware version of www.kiwisyslog.com

[dlparisi]

Weird that my problem went away after trying it in 2009 and it doesn't work for you in 2009. I've also tried a clean install of max9 on the workstation and rendernode and still have the same problem. I'm still ogining back and forth with gugila support.