Network rendering - Single Frame?

[jujubee]

Hey Marq- thanks for the reply. That information is really helpfful. I feel rather awful that you all read through my mess.

spawner- ah, in the initial setup. no. the information on that wasn't clear anywhere. I assumed (for some reason unkown to myself) that it had to be on the network. I will try that.

I guess I have to wonder then what parameter needs to be shared out on the network if this wasn't it. Would it be the projects folder? Ill give it a run. Thanks for the tips.

[Syclone1]

Why would they take away something so useful? Does it have that many problems?

I was just being a smartass about Viz 5, discreet/autodesk in their infinate wisdom have discontinued Viz and forcing anyone who has Viz to "upgrade" to 3dsmax. Even though most Viz users are Arch Viz people and will only have a use for 1/2 of max. So there wont be a Viz 5

-dave

[jujubee]

Hey Marq. Thanks once again. Your response really helped me out. I owe you one for sorting out that mess.

I set the DR up so that the spawner temp directory is local now (c:\temp.)

Now when I render I'm pulling up both computers to do their prepasses on the scene. This wasn't even happening before- I was probably flooding my network with too much info the other way. My question about this is that when 'Advanced Irradiance Map Parameters' is set to 'single', both computers will render their passes independently of one another.

For instance, one comp will be at prepass 3 (61%) while the other is at 2 (72%). It doesn't seem like I'm getting an additive results here. You'd think that they would both be working together on the same pass attempting to get to (100%) then rolling over to the next pass. Is this normal for this setting and why would I want to use it?

On the other hand, if I set 'Advanced Irradiance Map Parameters' to 'bucket', then the scene cranks through and the image gets stamped now by the two computers.

So is default Vray 'single' method just something that you don't want to use when Distributed Rendering?

-juju

[marq]

Jujubee

glad that helped.

About the prepass, that's not distributed, but i read in other threads that it will be in 1.1.
So, in order to work with single frame, you have to make the imap calculation on a single machine and then set it to reuse the map, then you can use dr with all the machines reading from it.
But here's the problem for me, i could make it work with bucket mode, but not with single frame and saved imaps. First the slave machine woudnt read the map, and now the client machine does not see the textures.
From what i read in other posts it should work if you use UNC paths for everything, so i dont know what im doing wrong, if you pull it out, please tell me how you setup the paths.

[jujubee]

Marq- I actually have it working fine in Bucket Mode. DR cut one of my scenes down to a third of its original 40 minute render. This was over a two computer set-p- 1 athlon 2600xp and a dualprocessor P3 800. It was all in the paths- all the materials needed to be converted to UNC names which was a royal pain. According to someone else on the forum, you can somehow specify this by adding the network paths to your bitmap configs- you got me if this works. Overall, this torture test was well worth racking my head for 3 days.

As for your Imap tips- I have no clue what that does. I wonder if it really saves any time over bucketing. I'll have to read up on it. I've only really been using Max seriously for about about a month and a half now so alot of this terminology is new to me...

juju

"It's all an attempt to cover-up my really bad modeling skills..."

[Syclone1]

lol Ill prob get it for this but Ive NEVER used UNC paths for my DR. Although my total render farm for DR is maxed out at 4 boxes. On my main box Ive allways had my maps and scenes on a local physcial drive Ive made "Z:\" which makes it easy for me as I just share that drive to my other slaves and map the network drives on each machine to "Z:\" and Ive never had a problem with maps and what not. Im not saying it will work for you but for a small farm it works fine for me. I do agree though if you have a large network that its better to use the UNC paths.

-dave

[yukon_cornelius_]

Gamma or not not to gamma in DR…

Gamma or not not to gamma in DR…
I get boxes that are different levels of brightness…

I have set
Enable gamma correction and load enabled state max files…
Does DR even look @ that????


Help help help

[Syclone1]

Re: Gamma or not not to gamma in DR…

Gamma or not not to gamma in DR…
I get boxes that are different levels of brightness…

I have set
Enable gamma correction and load enabled state max files…
Does DR even look @ that????


Help help help

I havnt tried using the gamma correction in max (I use photoshop) but I imagine that if the local machine is set up with gamma correction and set to affect the render and the slaves are not I imagine that the buckets would render differently from the main box.

-dave

[jujubee]

I seriously dislike UNCs. See its purpose but man what a pain. It's like a rollercoaster of actions. Have to go up and down trees to find the materials. (This is where I really wish Windows had a favorites list like Mac OS 9.2 has.)

That is a great and simple idea Syclone. I wish I had set up my previous scenes/drives such as this. I think I will convert it over to your setup to make life alot easier (I'd buy another drive specifically for this if I could afford it.) the only problem is that I have soo many other applications installed on the available drive as well as a Ghost Backup. Really don't want to partition it either... Hot Diggity Damn!!!