DR Autostart

[robusto92]

Hello,

I am part of a small team of product renderers. I am wondering if it is possible for the DR system to check to see if there are availible Render Nodes while rendering? We have 8 team members and a 10 Blade farm, it would be nice to send a DR rendering and when the Farm finishes team member A's job it automatically starts working the rendering in progress from Team Member B.

[robusto92]

So Im guessing this is not possible or only wanted by me

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, if you have all of your render nodes added to every workstation that you start a distributed rendering from they will eventually catch up and join the distributed rendering. For instance if two jobs are started on two different workstations using DR, each workstation will start adding servers but they will distribute unevenly. Eventually when one of the two renders finishes all nodes will add to the other one. You can also add/remove servers during render.
For better control over render nodes distribution you will have to use a render manager where you can send jobs and build a queue and you can assign render nodes for distributed rendering to each job precisely.

[robusto92]

This has not been my experience. We have a 10 blade farm and only the first person to submit gets it. If someone else sends a render the the connection is refused on the render farm

This is the error in the log [09:51:27.745] Warning : Render host txvrender002 (10.xxx.xxx.xxx:20204) disconnected by client

[09:51:27.749] Warning : Server 110.xxx.xxx.xxx:20204) is currently busy

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, this behaviour could be related to your network. Is this happening even after the first render has completed? Is this happening with every scene even a new simple scene ?

[robusto92]

As the render completes the blades are released. However they will not be included in any other rendering currently in process. So basically if we want to use the farm we have to wait for the farm render to finish before submitting a new rendering.

[vladimir_krastev]

If you use a render manager together with distributed rendering you can choose which node goes to which job. There are a lot of very good render managers already available and also some of them are license free.

[robusto92]

Vladimir, That is why I would love the Auto Restart feature. Or maybe even a "Check DR" button in the VFB. We mainly do high pixel stills, a typical rendering with out the use of the farm 1-3 hours, with the farm 10-20 minutes. I will take a look at some render managers, do you have a suggestion?

[vladimir_krastev]

You could add/remove servers during rendering or before sending the job. More advanced control over the jobs and the available farm resources (render nodes) gets in the field of render managers.

Here is one way to add/remove servers during distributed rendering:

[robusto92]

Thank you I never noticed that while rendering!!! Have a great Holiday!