DR Rendering 1 of 6 slaves is not responding.

[ChrisL]

Hi All

I have 7 Identicle machines in my work place that I would like to use for distributed rendering (HP xw4600, Dual core 3.0Ghz, Windows xp 32bit) I am using one of them and the rest to distribute too, However one of the machines says it connected and that the scene loaded but then after a while it says that it is not responding. Why Would that be? all the other machines are working fine, Oh apart from one which dosent want to install 3DS Max at all (if anyone know why that is I would like to know too).
I am using 3DS Max 2012, Vray 2.0 I have checked that all the I.P address is ok on both machines and firewalls are turned off, but I cant think of anything else to check.

[oligophant]

Hi ChrisL
Check the "Restart slaves on render end" on your Distributed rendering settings , that way always pick up the nodes. Sometimes the scene its very heavy and fails to load, just be patient. Just a question, are you using VR or MS? it also happens when there is an 3dmax error pop up message and you need to manualy click ok.

[ChrisL]

Cheers, I have had no error message pop up so I will try the restart on end tommorow, will that actually restart the computers or just the spawner?
I am not sure what VR or MS is?

[oligophant]

it just restart the spawner. VrayScatter (VS) and Multiscatter (MS), i hope it helps you

[ChrisL]

Cool I will do that as soon as I get to work. No I havent got VS or MS.
as a note the slave dosent work with just a plane and a teapot in it so I dont think its a scene size/Poly count problem.
Thanks for your help I hope it works if not I will try reinstalling.

[oligophant]

If you say that even with a plane a teapot doesn't pick up the slaves then maybe its a licence setup problem,

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150S...structions.htm

While render slaves do not require a separate license in order to render, you must tell V-Ray where to look for the V-Ray license server. You can do this either from the 3ds Max interface, or with the small external program setvrlserviceXX.exe, which can be accessed from the Start menu (Start menu > Programs > Chaos Group > V-Ray for 3dsmax > Licensing > Administration > Change V-Ray client license settings). See the licensing section for more information on how to set up the license for render slaves.

Just replace "localhost" with the ip adress of your workstation.

[ChrisL]

Cheers oligophant
The IP address is definatly pointing to my machine with the dongle in it. it is only my machine that has localhost.
It is only 1 of the 6 slaves that isnt working the image attached was just the problem machine isolated to show the issue the other 5 work ok.
Is there a way of my machine not being part of the render so I can carry on working? I am just setting low thread priority so I can carry on working.

[oligophant]

ChrisL you could check if either "register Vray spawner" as service or "remove Vray spawner service" work, i found out that on vray 1.5 register works ok on my pc but on vray 2.0 don't. And yes, only low thread priority can let you work while rendering. One alternative could be using backburner to let the others pcs do the render (split render). One question, does VrayRT works fine with that problematic pc?.

[ChrisL]

Ok I will try that out, thanks. I have never used backburner so I will check that out too.
I havent tried RT on any of the slave machines, only mine, thinking about it I probably have never opend max on any of the slave machines but i will try RT to see if it works.
Thanks for your help on this. hopfully I will get it going tomorrow as its been annoing me for ages, well since I upgraded to Max2012 & Vray 2.0. Maybe I should have mentioned that Max2011 and Vray1.5 worked ok on that machine.

[ChrisL]

Hi oligophant
Thanks for your help, I have found that the machine not working wont open Max at all so I guess that is the problem, but now I cant uninstall max or V-ray on that machine as in the task manager there is an instance of 3dsmax.exe running that I cannot stop for some reason, every time I end task it starts back up, V-ray & max require that to be stopped before uninstalling. But I am sure that must be the issue so thanks for all your help.

[Morne]

make sure you're not running vrayspawner as a service. That could cause max to start by itself everytime you end task it. Also stop the vrayspawner service

[greysheep5]

as above mentioned, stop all running services concerning vray (it keeps restarting if you just kill it, thats on purpose this way) and doublecheck if it is really no licence error!!!

i had the same problems, one of our computers wouldn´t start max 2012 if i tried to (or hang infinite while trying to start it), even though it ran fine before (after installation of max 2012 and vray 2.0 for it). in our case we had to repoint the computer to it´s licence, then max 2012 would run again and subsequently distributed rendering would also work again.

so if the licence is found under the given ip (or locally) which you could check in the browser like this (just enter your ip) http://localhost:30304/getstatus if max is not running...

best regards

christoph.

[ChrisL]

Thanks DVP3D I have tried removing the 2012 V-Ray Spawner service so many times as oligophant suggested that but it just dawned on me that I have 2010, 2011 & 2012 installed so went through them all and stopped the service and it now works. so thank you all so much for you help my problem is now fixed.
Many Thanks Chris.