Distributed rendering with minor error needs fixing

[pietervanstee]

Hi there,

I?ve juist installed some render nodes to speed up my workflow.
After some licensing issues I've got everything working quite well.

However I?ve got 2 questions at the moment:
1. In my render I?ve got some render nodes that don?t render some materials w assets properly. Possibly because of a missing asset, but the log file doesn?t show any missing assets.
Everything is transferred prior to the render by vray to the other nodes and kept in cache.
Can someone give me some clues what could be the cause of this? If you need more info or details about the settings please let me know.

2. The distributed rendering is working quite well and I?m pleased with the speed increasement. However it takes still quite some time before the nodes kick in.
Are there any tips or ways to speed this up? For renders that are not to complex (most exterior scenes) 1/4th of the whole render is done by my local workstation that sends the job the the nodes via vray DR.

Thanks in advance.

[vlado]

We will need some more details on #1 - what kind of assets? Do you get any errors if you turn on the "Check for missing maps" option in the Advanced view of the V-Ray System settings?

For #2, it depends on where exactly the problem is. If the initial .max file transfer is slow, then using X-Ref scenes to put some of the scene objects into different .max files may help (the X-Ref files will be transferred just once or after they are modified). But if 3ds Max itself takes a while to load the scene for rendering, then unfortunately there isn't much to do.

Best regards,
Vlado

[pietervanstee]

Hi Vlado,

I'll check for the missing maps next time I render this scene distributed.
Usually after adding quite some objects to the scene, I collect all the assets to the sceneassets folder.

I'm looking for a solution to sync and store the assets of the projects I'm working on locally on the render nodes ssd's.
That way only the max file has to be sent over before the render can start right?
At the moment I'm looking at a sync software where I can update a profile on my workstation, store that profile on a shared location and make the nodes load that profile so they sync accordingly the active projects with the assets.

If there are any other handy ways to do this please let me know what direction to look for.
Thanks

[pietervanstee]

Hi,

I've tested the distributed rendering further and I'm getting good results so far.
At the moment I'm rendering with 6/10 nodes, including my WS.
The image is rendering nearly as I would like it to (technically anyway).

I've added a few attachments to illustrate:
I've made sure all the assets are locally stored on each node, also I didn't get any missing asset warnings (notification feature is enabled in the render settings)
And still I get some buckets which are rendered differently then others: ws-asus vs server-02/03 for example.

Looks like the texture is there but it's rendered differently than the others.
I hope someone can point me in the right direction on this issue.

Thank you!

[marksmanguy]

Hey there, I've encountered this a bunch of times too, even today actually. I have a feeling that it has to do with some piece of geometry in the scene, or perhaps how certain materials are reacting to HDRI or 3ds max's environment lighting.

Try perhaps two things just to test if you're curious:

-Select all the geometry in the scene and collapse it. Rerender. If this fixes the problem then there's some weird piece of geometry in the scene (either a bug from too many modifiers or a script/plugin associated with it etc)
-See what happens when you turn off the dome light or environment map (native 3ds max)

[pietervanstee]

Hi,

Thank you for your reply, I'll try your tips to see what changes.
I've just used the vray sun and vray sky for illumination so that should be quite consistent.

Probably it'll have something to do with the material I guess, cause it's only in those materials, all other materials render just fine.

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Wrath sort of material is this do you use any maps for it? Could you try to calculate the GI on one machine and use it "From file" when rendering on the farm? Also would it be possible to send us the scene so we could run some tests?

[pietervanstee]

Hi Zdravko,

Thank you for your reply, I'll test some more, and send you the file if I don't get it fixed.

[pietervanstee]

Looks like the texture is there but it's rendered differently than the others.

Ok, got this problem fixed, it was a (shader) plugin - within one of the material slots of the material.
Installed it on the render nodes and the problem was fixed.