DBR Control

[Macker]

Hey,

Just a thought, owing to various frustrations that we've had the past couple of days...

We have 3x 3D artists at our office (myself included) and 2x render nodes. Naturally we use these as much as possible when firing out test renders and such, but as you'd expect sometimes one person is using both render nodes because nobody was using them before - so it was the logical thing to do...

But the problem is there is no way for that artist to relinquish control of a render node so that someone else may use it without cancelling his render.

So would it be possible to have some kind of floating window, or something built into the VFB to allow artists to add & remove render nodes on the fly? It would be incredibly handy/useful for us. The alternative is to have each artist have one render node each (lovely!), but then you get idle time between renders when they aren't being used, when someone else could be using it.

Basically my thinking is to create as much up-time on the nodes as possible.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Hey,

Just a thought, owing to various frustrations that we've had the past couple of days...

We have 3x 3D artists at our office (myself included) and 2x render nodes. Naturally we use these as much as possible when firing out test renders and such, but as you'd expect sometimes one person is using both render nodes because nobody was using them before - so it was the logical thing to do...

But the problem is there is no way for that artist to relinquish control of a render node so that someone else may use it without cancelling his render.

So would it be possible to have some kind of floating window, or something built into the VFB to allow artists to add & remove render nodes on the fly? It would be incredibly handy/useful for us. The alternative is to have each artist have one render node each (lovely!), but then you get idle time between renders when they aren't being used, when someone else could be using it.

Basically my thinking is to create as much up-time on the nodes as possible.

Humh correct me if I'm wrong but cant u just pick all render nodes and work with that. I thought Vray DBR will go to the 1st host that was asking for access and the nonce its finish it goes to next one- yes/no ?

Not sure never had that problem b4.

[Macker]

Yes, that is the problem. Who wants to sit and wait for their colleagues render to finish (which can sometimes be hours) when they have work of their own to do?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

So if they rendering final images ask them not to use render nodes then. Or buy more render nodes. Render node should be only rendering 1 job at a time - just in case you thinking of having node rendering 2 things at once.

[Macker]

I think you are missing the point entirely.

Let's say nobody is using any of the nodes, so I start rendering on both of them. An hour later someone else wants to use a node.

My options are as follows:
1) Cancel the render and restart it only using one render node.
or
2) Carry on rendering (could take hours) and the other person will have to wait to use the node, or not use it at all.

The third "workaround" option is to not use both render nodes in the first place, and only use one; but that is a waste of processing power that is then sat idle for no good reason.

"buy more nodes" also gives you the same problem, just scaled up. It doesn't matter if you have 100 nodes, the problem remains that if all 100 are in use then nobody else can use them and you either have to cancel your job or wait it out until the end.

The best solution would be to have an option whereby you can stop render node(s) and relinquish its control to another user, whilst still retaining control of x amount of other nodes - so you don't have to cancel your render and start again.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Ah right... well in this case just go to render node and kill vray process and start it again. Keep in mind u have to go on slave to do it so its not indeal for many nodes... u could use rendering managment software aka ReFaMo(very cheap I recommend it alot) and then just send command to select nodes to restart vray slave preocess.

[Macker]

This doesn't work unless you can time the submission of the second job to perfection, because the node will simply start on the old job once it has restarted the spawner service/3ds max.

[vlado]

You can add your coworkers' machines to your DR list always. However, they are free to run the V-Ray DR spawner whenever they want. If the machine is listed in on the render client render, and it starts up after the render has already begun, it will attempt to automatically join the rendering. If the spawner is terminated, the render client will redistribute its buckets to other machines. So it should simply be a matter of starting/stopping the spawners as needed.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Pixelcon]

Isn't there a timeout for nodes that join in after the render button has been hit? It seems to me that after about 10 mins of rendering, Vray stops accepting new nodes. Or is this a figure/setting that can be adjusted?

[vlado]

There is no timeout in the code... though to be fair, I have to try it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[samuel_bubat]

My options are as follows:
1) Cancel the render and restart it only using one render node.
or
2) Carry on rendering (could take hours) and the other person will have to wait to use the node, or not use it at all.

Not a very good solution.. but at least a temporary option. You can kill the DR Spawner on one node. Start rendering
Fire up the node again and hope that it´s your rendering that is grabbed first by the restarted node