DBR nodes say they’re connected (Deadline), but they aren’t actually contributing to the render

[thwalker]

Versions

• 3ds Max 2022.3
• V-Ray 5, update 1.4
• Deadline 10.2.1.1

Problem
DBR jobs will indicate nodes are picked up, but the CPU utilization and DRBucket AOV do not show any actual usage of those nodes. Render times for non-DBR and DBR are the same, further indicating the nodes aren’t actually contributing to the rendering. These are renders which typically take hours on a single node so this is not an issue of not giving enough time for the other nodes to pick up.

Repro Steps:

• Submit job to Deadline with DBR enabled (any number of nodes).
• Job is picked up, as well as all of the nodes.
• The primary task frame (0) has full CPU usage, but all other frames hover around 2%.
  • Vraylog.txt indicates the nodes were picked up and are connected to DBR.
  • Deadline task log for each frame indicates this too.
  • VRayDRBucket AOV only shows the buckets only rendered by the primary node.

Remoting into any of the nodes other than the primary node shows 3ds Max running as a background process. For what it’s worth, Deadline Worker is running, but there is no GUI present.

Any help or direction would be appreciated, thanks!
Thomas

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for posting. Are you able to render using distributed rendering without using Deadline? Please test this and share the result.

[Joelaff]

We do successfully use deadline for this. It sounds like you know this, but it is one job with the number of frames being the number of machines you want rendering.

Try with a simple test scene first. Check firewall settings. Also, make sure you have all the nodes added in the distributed renderibg settings in the UI machine.

[Joelaff]

But sounds like you have that correct given the logs. Maybe they are not getting licenses?