Slave problems!!

[blackmug]

Hello... we have a little problem here.. we have a small farm.. 5 quads (q6600) one dual opterom and one quad extreme on which one is installed licence... DR was rendering without mistakes on that computers but we bought the new i7 (2 machines) and put the licence in one of them... everything is working fine but there is a problem with DR...
the slaves (5x q6600, and quad extreme) join the render very late... lc and all the prepass are done, the render starts and when is a 50 % or more finished some slaves start to render... but not all.. 3, max four of them...
why does it happens??? we thought maybe the new i7 is too strong for them but that would mean that every computer in the farm has to be equall...
Vlado, please help!!!

[RErender]

How long are the renders? The i7's have much better memory handling so it would not surprise me that they could be much faster on LC calcs...

[duke2]

Shoot a static scene to backburner and see how long each computer takes to do a frame. Maybe the new i7's are a lot faster than you thought!

[blackmug]

the renders are about 30 minutes... for the animation.. 1000 pixels wide... i know that they r very fast... so thats a little problem.. because the other machines r not so fast.. but they r not bad also... hm.

[blackmug]

it was about 55 minutes on quad extreme and 5 slaves (q6600) and with i7 is about 30 minutes with these slaves... but the slaves start to render when the render is almost done...

[RErender]

So how long is the LC calc on the q6600 vs. the i7? Remember each box has to render it's own LC. A way around this is to render the LC on the local box and then save and use it for the DR full render.


A quick test would be to DR the scene without GI, does it still take longer for the slaves to start or do they start soon?

[blackmug]

on the q6600 is about 25 minutes and on the i7 is about 10 - 13... i7 renders a frame in 45 minutes alone and with slaves in 30 minutes... but all the prepasses is doing alone.. on the previous system when quad extreme was main and q6600 was slaves they rendered everything perfectly together.. all the prepasses and the render... they r so late with i7..

[stevesideas]

Im not sure it sounds like anything to do with the processors being too fast. Have you checked your network setup and made sure that there is nothing slowing it down...firewalls. Is the vray licence and dr setup correctly on all machines.

[RErender]

Sounds precisely like that is what is happening to me, a few minutes to transfer the files and start rendering plus 25 mins for the LC calc

[vlado]

What is the processor usage on the slaves before they join the rendering? Also, have you removed the ViewCube-related files from the slaves?

Best regards,
Vlado

[blackmug]

hello Vlado!
thanks for answering... hm. the processor usage on every slave is 100% even thought i dont see their buckets on render... after some time they apear.. but not from start.. the firewall is disabled on every machine...
i dont know nothing about ViewCube-related files .. can you please explain?
i didnt have such problems before... just when i7 has arrive... i put licence on i7 machine (before it was on quad extreme) and point all licence servers from slaves to that i7 machine... i put dynamic memory also at 4000 MB...even thought the computers work on 50 % of ram when they r rendering... the file is not sooooo havy..

[vlado]

I think the viewcube is related to a file called AutoCamMax.gup in 3ds Max 2009; it has been causing all sorts of odd issues with DR. Another thing to try is change the way you run the spawner (as a service or not). You can also test command-line rendering with 3ds Max (using the 3dsmaxcmd.exe command) and check if this runs fine.

Best regards,
Vlado

[blackmug]

i figure it out....
i switched to bf+lc... and i calculate lc on main machine, save it and reopen it... i put it in the same folder on the slaves, and they start render from start... even a prepass... in previous files i used IM+LC so probably i7 has strong memory chanel (stronger then q6600) and does everything on his own.. heh..
now they r rendering very good... 15 minutes per frame... with precalculated LC... thanks anyway...

[RErender]

That's what I was saying, heh, glad "you" figured it out

[stevesideas]

What i7's do you have...can you tell me how much faster they are than the 6600's ?