Environment Var to Disable Embree on Nodes and Disable Mouse Tracking in VFB

[Joelaff]

We have a few older render nodes that are still fast enough to use (multi-proc), but don't support Embree. Would be nice to be able to set an environment variable sch that only those nodes didn't use Embree. I am not seeing flickering in my tests of mixing them (but it likely is scene dependent, as I only tested with one scene).

Alternately this could be a command line switch passed to 3dsmaxcmd.exe

Also, how about an environment variable, or just the default behavior) to disable the VFB mouse tracking on render nodes. This way you could leave mouse tracking on at the workstation and the nodes would use the previously selected method (triangulation). Much of the time we find it easier to render WITH the VFB, rather than to turn it off for net rendering (because of how it handles render elements).

Thanks.

[vlado]

For the next builds, Embree will render on any 64-bit machine, so no environment variables will be needed.

For the follow mouse on render nodes, we can do this - I'm wondering if anyone is using it on render nodes anyways.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Joelaff]

Excellent news about Embree. I heard Intel was loosening the restrictions. Sounds great.

Would this functionality be in the latest stable builds available? I want to upgrade the farm to one of those anyway for the Matte Reflections fix.


Occasionally we will take a look at specific areas of a render on a render node. So the ability to turn ON mouse tracking is useful. But I think perhaps it should default to off in render nodes.

For most scenes, the block order doesn't make a huge difference, but once you have a lot of VRay Proxies, or giant EXR maps and stuff it can help a lot.