Question on DR slave list

[Fredrik Averpil]

In the most recent versions of V-Ray for Maya, is the DR slave list still stored locally on the machine?

[yolov]

Hi,

By default it should write to server_lists.tmp and server_ports.tmp in your maya folder (default is User\Documents\maya). server_status.tmp stores which ones were last enabled/disabled and server_alias.tmp is there with the latest nightlies to store a description for the entries in those lists. If you have more than one maya version installed on the same machine and all maya installations have their default paths, those lists will be shared between them.

[Fredrik Averpil]

Hi Yolov,

I see.

I believe it would be very useful to at least have the option to store the list of DR slaves in the Maya scene file, maybe as an override. Or perhaps have the option to specify where this server_lists file should reside. If overridden or defined, the render will use that file rather than look for a local one.

I don't know what your take is on this. There has now been multiple cases here where another machine than the one where the DR slave list was setup is managing the rendering process. The reason in most cases is because artists doesn't know that the DR slave list is locally stored. It's also easy to forget about this. I've made this mistake several times although knowing it's a local setting.

Should I post this as a feature request in the wishlist forum?

[yolov]

I think what you've told us here should be enough. I'll make a note on this and forward it to our developers for consideration. Thanks for sharing

[Fredrik Averpil]

Thanks Yolov

[yolov]

We could make a way to modify where those files will go but we would probably not make them part of the scene file.

[Fredrik Averpil]

Being able to modify where they go would be the best solution, I think. So that would be awesome!

[pechart]

+1 for that!

[everythinghasfresnel]

I have been wondering where this slave list is stored as well. I thought that it was saved into the file already, because 'Enable Distributed Rendering' in Render Settings feels like it's specific to each file. But then I was cleaning out my preferences folder and stumbled across these server_*.temp files.

I would like to see these files stored in the preferences folder for the specific Maya version, such as "2013-x64", to avoid issues between versions, but this would be resolved if we could specify where they are saved.

My bigger issue is that there are 4 individual files, and they are described as 'tmp' files. I would prefer the fields be merged into a single comma separated file so that we could easily change the values in a text editor without opening the scene. Mental ray satellite does this with the 'maya.rayhosts' file in the version preferences folder.

I would also like a command line render flag which specifies whether or not to enable distributed rendering. Mental ray satellite handles this with the -rnm flag, but come to think of it, I actually haven't tested it on V-Ray.

[yolov]

You can set this using -distributed=0/1/2 in the V-Ray Standalone ("off" by default), see vray -help for more info on that. In Maya you can also use the mel setAttr "vraySettings.sys_distributed_rendering_on" 1;