Textures not loading with distributed rendereing

[ralf_al]

I´m not 100% sure whether this is a vray problem or a network issue, but since it´s only happening while using vray´s DR, i´ll post it here:

Distributed rendering of a scene with some textures (correct UNC paths are used!) often leads to (random) buckets with missing textures (Check for missing files in the vray system rollout unchecked) or renderslaves not renderind buckets at all (Check for missing files checked)

This seems to be connected to too many open network connections that aren´t closed properly after accessing the textures. the image below shows a screenshot of the MMC displaying numerous open connections even after a rendering finished. Manually closing all open connections solves the problem, but this isn´t more than a ugly workaround. My theory regarding this is, that Windows XP can handle only a certain amount of open connections at a time which in effect leads to the above problems.

Maybe someone else can try this to confirm that this isn´t a specific problem over here (thanks in advance). The more renderslaves are used the bigger the problem gets, but a scene with 10-12 different textures and 4-5 slaves should be enough the reproduce the issue.

[vlado]

I think this is a problem with the textures in 3dsmax when many machines try to load the same texture at the same time; not sure how this can be avoided - perhaps copying the textures locally to the slaves would work best.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Da_elf]

i used to have the same problem with my imap. when both computers tried to access the imap at the same time one would crash. but then it automatically restarts so all is good. however textures could be more of a pain since it wouldnt crash but just chug along without the texture leaving you with bad frames

[ralf_al]

distributing the textures with the help of a small batch does indeed work fine, but is only slightly less annoying than closing the network connections manually.

And I´m not so sure about max causing this. If this were the case, the same should happen using backburner, shouldn´t it? Maybe someone with a Brazil or FinalRender license could share his/her experience with texture-heavy scenes and distributed rendering. This way it would be easy to rule out (or confirm) max as the source of the problem.

On a sidenote: max´s resource collector utility does not find any vray hdri maps used in the scene.

[Morbid Angel]

Yes this is the case with windows indeed.
It is known that windows defaults to maximum of 10 connections limit per lincense. Thats why linux/unix server is a solution which allows unlimited connections.

[Dynedain]

---- edit ----

my problem is unrelated

[Morbid Angel]

I think this is a problem with the textures in 3dsmax when many machines try to load the same texture at the same time; not sure how this can be avoided - perhaps copying the textures locally to the slaves would work best.

Best regards,
Vlado

Vlado, how can this be reproduced?

[mike.edel]

it would be an idea to try a linux server with samba to share the maps

at least that would help you get around the 10 connection limit of windows
you just need an old computer (an old pentium 500 or so will do) with a large disc and a linux distribution of your choice

ideally it would be connected with gigabit networking, but 100mbit should be ok for smaller amounts of files/render clients

we currently use a samba server for storing the rendered final frames and we are in the process of switching our backburner manager to the same machine (using wine emulation) - we had some very nasty problems recently with backburner on windows machines that i hope to get around that way...
we'll see...

Mike

[ralf_al]

That sounds like a great idea. I have a gigabit network in place here, so network speed shouldn´t be the problem.

Please keep us updated on your backburner on wine progress. I´ll try this for myself and post the outcoming of this endevour. But since I won´t be in the office next week, this will have to wait a few days. Maybe you´ll be able to remove some possible obstacles in the meantime. My personal linux experience somehow tells me there will be some issues to solve...

[Dynedain]

---- edit ----

my problem is unrelated