VRay 1.5 DR - Backburner - VIZ 2008

[beestee]

Decided to start a proper thread on this as I have gotten a ways into it and came up with some results.

1. I followed harperperkins'(aka Matt English) tutorial available at Vizdepot on the subject, and got it working perfectly for local hosting of the DR(thanks Matt!). Local DR confirmed working with VIZ 2008.

2. I sent the same project local hosted again, but turned off spawner on one of the slaves and left it active in the IP list for DR. After sending the render and letting it go for a little bit I activated the spawner on the slave, as expected the DR picked up the new buckets right away and rendered them perfectly normal. Local DR with on-the-fly slave addition/removal confirmed working in VIZ 2008.

3. I sent the same project through backburner with DR to a remote computer and it renders it, but only utilizing the local processor.

4. I sent the project to my local machine through backburner and it picks up the additional buckets, but calculates them blank as if there is no geometry in those areas of the image. Interestingly though, the local buckets still calculate fine

Any ideas to get the backburner scenarios working properly, or at least get me going in the right direction?

This is the error the log was giving me for the remote DR host:

Warning:  Could not connect to host XX.X.XX.XXX.  No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

I had no errors for the final scenario, but it seems that the scene did not actually transfer to the slave.

Ideally we would like to be able to set up an action/script for backburner that shuts down spawner at render start and starts it up at render end. This would in effect give us full processor usage of our farm whether we have 1 frame rendering or 10000 frames rendering

[claude_tnt]

the error is because windows permission.

da

[beestee]

I am still running XP. I have admin rights on my computer and I just ran another test where I sent the DR through BB to host on one of my workmates computers who also has admin rights. It used only the local buckets and did not connect to any of the slaves. If permissions were the issue, I think it would present a problem with local DR as well, but that is not the case.

I checked the available firewalls and I really don't think they are causing a problem, I feel that the problem lies somewhere else.

The rundown in short:

Local DR, I keep the connection to the slaves and the scene reaches them correctly...

Quasi-Local DR, I keep the connection to the slaves but the scene does not make it...

Remote DR, I lose the connection to the slaves altogether.

[sany]

I can confirm I have the same problem with Max 9.

Except that when submitted through BB to my workstation instead of not rendering any geometry it does something that earlier versions of DR used to do and appears to mix up all the buckets so that the image is actually useless.

Also another thing I noticed is that hyperthreading or multi proc doesn't appear to work when using BB for DR as only one bucket shows up? Only when DR is used localy or rendered through BB onto my workstation does it show the correct amount of buckets.

[Da_elf]

ive been getting the dr/backburner black bucket since r5 but vlado said his was working. claude if you know how to set it up let us know

[sany]

ive been getting the dr/backburner black bucket since r5

do you mean your BB servers are doing DR but rendering them black or you just mean they're black when submitted to local machine through BB (Quasi-Local DR as Beestee refers to it) and your not getting DR to work with BB servers. That would be a step in the right direction for me.

[Da_elf]

if i enable a spawner on my boxx system, then on my work system i turn on BB manager and server then send a render to the BB with DR turned on, the work systems buckets are fine, the boxx system though will render black buckets. and trust me ive tested many different options and got the same results each time. vlado said his was working though. so this leads me to believe its not a bug but something to do with how the networks setup all we need is for someone to crack the right setting and share it

[sany]

So claude_tnt does your DR through BB work fine? or anyone else have it working? I could really do with getting to the bottom of why this isn't working.

[jsteinert]

I sure would like to have this problem figured out.

[harperperkins]

I'll try this out on my network this weekend and let y'all know what I come up with - sounds like it should be fun!

[sv]

Except that when submitted through BB to my workstation instead of not rendering any geometry it does something that earlier versions of DR used to do and appears to mix up all the buckets so that the image is actually useless.

i get this all the time.
i'd really love to know what causes this, because we just had our whole network redone by a new IT firm, and i was so hoping that this problem would go away, but it hasn't!

Permissions really shouldn't be an issue as i'm sure that is all sorted, but half the time the DR slaves render the previously submitted file, mixing up all the buckets.

Anyone know what causes this?

[sv]

oh, and i've had DR working through backburner on the first try with RC4, but with the same problem - the DR slaves render the previously submitted scene - so strange.

It's not like i've just submitted the scene though; sometimes it's the scene submitted days or maybe even weeks previously. just seems to me like the DR slaves aren't flushing the scene out properly - really confusing....

[jsteinert]

Still no ideas on this problem?