DR with light cache and IR map?

[dpolcino]

Are light cache and IR calculations supposed to work with DR? I always get black boxes or insane looking posterized boxes during these processes on my small network, whereas final rendering works fine and renders with bitmaps and PhoenixFD, that's all good. Assuming this IS possible, can someone walk me through a couple steps that I might be missing?

[Morne]

This is a little outdated, but still valid:
http://vray.info/tutorials/vray_dist...nd_backburner/

[dpolcino]

Yup thanks, that's the tut that got me as far as I got!
SHOULD vray distribute the light cache and IR tasks? If I know it should work, I'll keep at it, otherwise if it has to be calculated on one computer, that would be nice to know.

[Morne]

Lightcache isn't "distributed" unless you're using solidrocks. I'm not sure if that has changed for VRay3
IR is distributed and will work fine over DR. It has different modes for different tasks depending on how you want to use it.

Could you give a screengrab of the "black boxes" or postirized boxes?
If you only see these boxes during the precalc phase, but the final render looks fine, then don't worry about it.

Without more detail in your steps and screengrabs, it's difficult to say what the problem could be

[dpolcino]

Ah interesting... I did another test last night and it's all working, the difference: I didn't open SolidRocks up this time.

[svetlozar.draganov]

Lightcache isn't "distributed" unless you're using solidrocks. I'm not sure if that has changed for VRay3
IR is distributed and will work fine over DR.

Light Cache is still distributable neither in Vray 3.0 nor in SolidRocks plugin.

Are light cache and IR calculations supposed to work with DR? I always get black boxes or insane looking posterized boxes during these processes on my small network, whereas final rendering works fine and renders with bitmaps and PhoenixFD, that's all good. Assuming this IS possible, can someone walk me through a couple steps that I might be missing?

Let us know if you got this issue again.

[dpolcino]

Seems good so far now that I have a better handle on things. Will do more testing. thanks.
Could you clarify this sentence, I think it was mis-typed a bit?
"Light Cache IS still distributable NEITHER?in Vray 3.0 nor in SolidRocks plugin"

[Morne]

well as far as I know all the machines does a LC calculation, but only the one is used form whichever pc finishes first

solidrocks has some kind of "trick" whereby (and I'm simplifying it now) the LC gets distributed and shared between each slave so each slave contributes, in a similar fashion that the IR map get calculated and shared by all the slaves

This is just my understanding of it. Of course I won't mind somebody confirming this or correcting me

[dpolcino]

I'm actually talking about the prepass, just to clarify. One can see the first light cache doesn't have any buckets. In any case everything seems to be working, I think it was SolidRocks, so you gotta bake it into the scene, then render. Thanks for the tips.

[Morne]

Yes me too
Lightcache doesnt have buckets. It kinda works "progressively" over the entire image.

[svetlozar.draganov]

Seems good so far now that I have a better handle on things. Will do more testing. thanks.
Could you clarify this sentence, I think it was mis-typed a bit?
"Light Cache IS still distributable NEITHER?in Vray 3.0 nor in SolidRocks plugin"

I am sorry about that - Light Cache is not distributable.

well as far as I know all the machines does a LC calculation, but only the one is used form whichever pc finishes first

Yes that's true but this is not distributed rendering.

[Subburb]

Hello !

+1 with Svetlozar : Lightcache is not distribuable.

SolidRocks don't makes magic : the "ShareLC" in SolidRocks just helps things to not waste time :
it renders first locally the lightcache (on main Pc) then save it on file. Then, it launches again the render on the slaves with lightcache in "from file" mode.
This to avoid each slave to compute a lightcache for nothing and waste time (very often slaves are slower than main station).
NOTE : this feature works ONLY with Vray DR and not BB (backburner).

Be very careful to not confuse Vray DR, wich ditributes the rendering on same image over several slaves, and BB (backburner) wich render one frame per machine.

note : If you're Using SolidRocks, then you MUST manage distributed rendering VIA SolidRocks (sounds logical).
In SolidRocks, there's 2 buttons : DR and BB that you can activate, wich respectively set on/off DR and/or BB.

Be careful to avoid using DR and BB simultaneously, as it makes the process very complex.
In first time, i suggest to activate one at a time.

Hope it helps,

[dpolcino]

Ok it just started happening again, it had been fine for a while. Nothing to do with SolidRocks since I didn't open it for this session. During prepass the slaves either give back black or a very intense and lame color. It doesn't seem to affect the final render though, but who knows if it is or isn't? All my paths are good, it's a simple scene. Any ideas? Or is it just a display thing and it really IS working (no errors in log).

Thanks,
Dave

[tashko.zashev]

Hello Dave,

Actually this bucket difference issue during the DR Irradiance map calculations is already added to our bug system and our developers will try to fix it.
There is a related topic about this issue here :
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...diance+buckets

The final rendering should be fine, in case that the issue is the same.

[dpolcino]

Thanks, yes, it doesn't always happen so was hard to track down. The bad buckets do occasionally effect the final render FYI.