DR issues

[percydaman]

I'm repurposing a laptop of mine I have sitting around and installed windows7 max 2010 32bit and vray 32bit. When I try to use it to render DR, my main machine's console keeps saying that it connects to the machine, sends off the scene, and then gives me an error saying the machine is not responding, says the render is complete (it isn't) and then keeps recycling. I can see the max install popping on the laptop. Then it just keep repeating. Any ideas?

[dlparisi]

Possibly a firewall issue?

[percydaman]

Yeah I guess that's possible. I would have thought it wouldn't be able to state it saw the machine, and sent the scene file successfully though if there were firewall issues

[vlado]

Have you run a backburner rendering on that machine (or a render through 3dsmaxcmd.exe)?

Best regards,
Vlado

[percydaman]

no i haven't tried backburner, though I could give it a go, if thats a troubleshooting step your suggesting.

EDIT: My main machine is 64bit and my slave 32bit so I can't send BB jobs, but I can tell you that the BB server on the slave had no issues connecting and registering to the manager on the main machine.

[vlado]

Then try the 3dsmaxcmd.exe thing; the first time a machine does a backburner render (or a render through 3dsmaxcmd.exe), it seems to set up some stuff on the machine. Without this, V-Ray is not able to start 3ds Max in slave mode for DR.

Best regards,
Vlado

[percydaman]

Alright I tried that. Took me awhile to figure that out as I've never tried command line rendering. But I was able to successfully send a command line job and render it on my render slave. Tried DR again and same problem. Slave gets the job, and no buckets ever show up and it will start cycling through 'not responding' messages.

[vlado]

Ok, does it happen on other scenes? If not, can you get me this particular one to vlado@chaosgroup.com so that we can check it out?

Best regards,
Vlado

[percydaman]

yes I'm afraid it happens on any scene. Ive tried a couple 'test' scenes. I'm stumped.

[vlado]

Hm; perhaps you can try to disable Windows Firewall and UAC. In any case, we have a Windows 7 machine here so I will have to try this.

Best regards,
Vlado

[thablanch]

no i haven't tried backburner, though I could give it a go, if thats a troubleshooting step your suggesting.

EDIT: My main machine is 64bit and my slave 32bit so I can't send BB jobs, but I can tell you that the BB server on the slave had no issues connecting and registering to the manager on the main machine.

You can send to 32 bits with 64 bits machine, in the BB dialog box, lower left, Advanced button, dialog box Advanced settings pops up, in the middle, Connection to manager section, submit job as 32 bits...

[percydaman]

You can send to 32 bits with 64 bits machine, in the BB dialog box, lower left, Advanced button, dialog box Advanced settings pops up, in the middle, Connection to manager section, submit job as 32 bits...

Awesome. Your post brought me to the solution. I sent the BB job like you suggested, and the slave picked up and then spit out BB errors saying it couldn't pick up a vray license. Now I never told the slaves vray install to point to the master machine with the dongle attached. I always just assumed that it was like max, in that as long as you were sending from a machine that was properly licensed, you didn't need to worry about any of that on a slave machine. Especially since I specifically told vray to be installed as a slave only on the slave machine. So after sorting that out, its now rendering DR fine! Thanks a bunch all!

BTW vlado, off topic, but I sent you an email awhile ago asking for access to maya nightly builds. Did you get the email? Tried sending you a PM, but of course your mailbox is full.

[thablanch]

The Vray install actually ask at the end of the install where the license is located.. but I guess thaht we are a bunch of next>next>next clickers.... Glad it helped