Distribute rendering the Irradence map, good idea?

[JOAN_LORD]

Hi guys, I am doing another animation, my process is calculating the light cache for primary and secondary, and then rendering out the "prepass animaiton" option for Irradence map, this way it creates small manageable IM files and then an average is taken over a few of them at a time, which is how I want it.

(I tried doing one big file but it doesn't work great over a network and things really grind to a halt when the machine is saving the last few Nth frames as the IM file get's to well over 5 gig and has to resave over and over !!!!! (maybe this needs looking into or maybe I shouldn't be using it for this?) it's a 2000 frame animation...

anyway my question is, I have a lot of machines now so I was using them to distribute the Irradence solution, but It appears I am getting some darker buckets, now the only file that is referenced to the file is the Light Cache file, which is in a common file on the network drive. so I'm thinking this is why I am getting it? or should in general only one machine do the calcs?

see screenshot!

Cheers

[Pixelcon]

I also see this sometimes when im using DR for stills but it doesnt seem to affect the final image. I'd be interested to see what the cause of this is...

[JOAN_LORD]

I've just compiled the render from last night, it's flickering all over the place! Ahhhhh I'm meant to have this finished for Monday next week, so getting nervous, is it because of my Distribution rendering for the IM, or is it my general render settings for the animation? :-S

[JOAN_LORD]

Just to end this thread, I would say AVOID distribute rendering the IM, and just use back-burner, seems to work fine this way.

[vlado]

If you aim to reduce flickering, then it would indeed be best to use backburner and not DR.

Best regards,
Vlado