Load irradiance map speed

[Papigiulio]

Im having some trouble rendering an animation in vray 2.3.

I have created a simple walkthrough animation, 72 frames. Rendered it in animation (prepass) at a resolution of 1280 x 720. Copied all the files to the server (around 3.3 megs each) and started to render the animation.

However each time it has to load the next frame it takes 1 or 2 minutes to load a irradiance map. I believe its perhaps because of a slow network? or is 3.3 megs for 1 irradiance file too big?

Ive searched around on this forum and noticed some people suggesting to copy the files locally to each node, how would that work. If I copied everything, will vray automatically find the files, since only the mainpc can access, grab files from 1 location.

[vlado]

Have you tried a newer V-Ray version? We did some improvements there a while ago, though I can't remember when exactly.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Papigiulio]

I would LOVE to really, but at the moment we cant risk installing VRAY 3 beta. Very annoying even though I begged the chief to upgrade.

So i need any solution with 2.3 im afraid.

[svetlozar.draganov]

You can still update to the latest official 2.40.04 version.
About local copy of project files to each node - Vray won't automatically find them and you should use Assets Tracking and set the paths for the external assets manually to point locally. You should also change Irradiance Map / Light cache loading paths since they don't appear in Assets Tracking as far as I remember.
Please note that the slowdown between the frames is not only due to IM cache loading - Vray usually frees from memory all external assets at the end of each frame and it loads them again at the begging of the next one so not only GI caches are loaded but all other external assets are re-loaded as well.

[samuel_bubat]

We sometimes run into the same problem. it´s just the amount of data Vray has to load each frame. Proxies, Maps, Irradiance Maps etc.
Wouldn´t it be possible to make an option within the DR to cache all files locally on the rendernodes before starting the animation ?
Sometime everything combined can be 500mb to 1gb in our case. With 20 nodes that´s quite some amount of data even for a fast network
that vray fetches every frame. Sometime this is even the largest part of our rendertime... waiting till everything is loaded.

[vlado]

You should also change Irradiance Map / Light cache loading paths since they don't appear in Assets Tracking as far as I remember.

This was fixed a long long time ago; all V-Ray caches now appear correctly in the Asset Tracker.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Papigiulio]

Thanks for all the answers. Since each irradiance map was around 3 megs and had to be loaded by all 12 machines on 1 network which was painstakingly slow we decided to copy all the maps to each computer locally and render the animation 10 frames each on each computer. was still 10 minutes per frame though. Thank god that job is finished.