DR for Animation?

[JabbaTheNut]

Am I able to use VRay 3 Distributed Rendering for animations?

I have found tutorials on how to set up and use Distributed Rendering for still shots. I have also found tutorials on how to set up Backburner for animations. I have not, however, seen any tutorials on how to use Distributed Rendering with animations. Before I conclude that no tutorials exist because it is not possible, I thought I would ask.

Thanks.

[vlado]

I think this is only possible through the V-Ray Standalone when you have exported a .vrscene file for the entire animation. Why would you want to do that, however?

Best regards,
Vlado

[JabbaTheNut]

vlado,

Thanks for your quick reply. I am exploring options for a small render farm for animations. I know I can use VRay in network rendering through Backburner. However, I heard that distributed rendering was fast and I was curious if it would be faster than network rendering. Another option I was looking at was distributed rendering with VRay RT 3. I saw some very nice animations produced with RT. In your view, what is the preferred method of rendering animations on a small render farm? I can go CPU or GPU.

[vlado]

It will not be faster than regular frame by frame rendering. After all, the amount of work that needs to be done is still the same. For animations, frame-by-frame is the best way to go.

Best regards,
Vlado

[JabbaTheNut]

Awesome. Thanks Vlado.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

I think you can do this also from Maya - the exporter will automatically process the entire animation and send it to the slaves. But like Vlado said, people just render frame by frame, and this is probably the reason there are no tutorials...

[JabbaTheNut]

I saw this VRay 3 RT animation on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVHAq06GGNM. It was done on a single GTX 690. The 2600 frame animation was done in 2 days. I thought this was pretty impressive.

I want to know how to render an animation through VRay RT. I am interested in a small GPU-based render farm for animations, rather than a CPU-based farm. The ability to accomplish this using VRay RT would cool.

I noticed that one can do distributed rendering of VRay RT. How does one do this in the context of an animation?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Currently, the RT animation must be started from the Render menu -> Render animation with V-Ray RT. It has some issues though. At some point, we will integrate RT inside Maya itself, and you will be able to render with RT/GPU in the same way as the production renderer.

[vlado]

I noticed that one can do distributed rendering of VRay RT. How does one do this in the context of an animation?

With Maya, this is also possible by exporting a .vrscene and rendering with V-Ray Standalone.

Best regards,
Vlado

[JabbaTheNut]

Can the .vrscene with V-Ray Stand Alone method use GPU or must it use CPU?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

It supports both CPU and GPU.

[JabbaTheNut]

That's cool. How do you specify using GPU when using a .vrscene with V-Ray Standalone?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Pass -rtEngine=5 to vray

[JabbaTheNut]

Great. Thanks

[vlado]

Yes, it can use the GPU using the -rtengine=5 option (enables CUDA rendering). Run V-Ray Standalone without any arguments to see the available options.

Best regards,
Vlado