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**Arkitec** · 09-10-2003, 02:12 PM

Ill try to help you out, since I am working on dr at my office now.

Dr allows you to send portions of an image to several machines (up to 10)

. It uses whats called buckets; to make up a complete rendered image.

You can either copy all your textures and files to each machine or use a UNC path to the network server. You actually see each computer render each bucket on your local machine (it also shows you the machine name that is being rendered per bucket - WAY COOL :

)

Network rendering is a basic feature in MAX/VIZ. It sends the information to each machine then renders a COMPLETE image per machine (basically used for animations.)

All the plugins and textures need to be installed on each "slave" machine as well.

Once you work everything out....Its awesome. I've been using dr for the past week and am in love with (I think I am going to marry it - LOL

A render farm can be at your office, with a bunch of computers set up and take advantage of the CPU's. They have these services available on the internet. Im not sure how I feel about sending your account info to other people though....but I have not had any experience in doing that....maybe someone else on the board has used services like this though.

Hopefully I have explained it well enough and correctly.....

Anyone else?

Arkitec

**cpnichols** · 09-10-2003, 03:43 PM

On a very basic level, network rendering is identical to the way network rendering is done im max, but instead of using max rendering engine you use Vray. But unlike Brazil, and Mentalray, all your network nodes are free, so no matter how many computers you have in your office (10, 30, 1000), they are all free to render with Vray. Network rendering is what you use to render animations using Vray.

DR, is really cool, but only advantage with stills. It splits the image into buckets and assigns buckets to different computers to render. It is one of the only ways to use multiple computer to render a single image. You are only limited to 10 computers when doing network rendering. Due to network traffic, you may actually loose performance if you go over 10 computers.

**gustojunk** · 09-10-2003, 05:05 PM

thanks guys this really helps a lot. NOw I have a basic understanding of the differences. BUt it only brings up more questions

So basically to take advantage of multiple machines to render a single frame the only way is DR?

In other words, If I send a file to a farm of 500cpu to render a single frame of 10000x6000 pixels output, what happens? the farm cannot do any better than a dual cpu machine at home? Or can the farm then utilize up to 10 of their machines? if they are dual CPU, can DRstill utilize 1o machines (total of 20 processors) of only 5 macines (total of 10 processors)?

I also think it's a bit sketchy to have to supply my own plugin. I'm looking at 2 rendermans: www.respower.com (this one ask me to bring my own plugins) and www.rendercore.com. Do you guys have any feedback on these? or reccomend any other farms?

Thanks a lot for the help so far,

Gustavo

**stefan** · 10-10-2003, 02:57 AM

1.) Regarding your first question: Generally yes.
2.) Your 500 machine farm will use 10 of its machines to render one image. no matter wether they have one or two cpu´s (or 4?)
Distributed rendering is more suitable to render single images and therefore, test rendering images to achieve a final look. Typically, the animation is then rendered using networkrendering, on all 500 machines, if you want. Each machine renders a complete image then.

I´ve heard that there are also problems with distributed rendering, as sometimes, due to the nature of the Irradiance map, you can see the corners of the rendered buckets, which, although subtle, doesn´t look nice and is noticable. For test rendering its just fine of course. It´s like having the power of ten machines on your desktop.

Stefan

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DR versus network rendering?

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