Vray Maya DR on MacOSX slave problem

[waaazoo]

Hello,

I'm trying to set up for the first time a DR slave on MacOSX. I have to say that I'm totally lost now on a Mac as I'm working since many years on Windows platform

I installed vray_adv_150SP1_maya2011_leopard_x64 on the Macpro, only the standalone. I selected install as a service. Everything worked as written in the documentation, I think.

From my Win7pro station I tried a render with DR, naturally setup the IP of the Macpro. I'm still getting V-Ray "warning: Could not connect to host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx".

-How can I check that the slave service is running on the macpro ?
-I can ping the Macpro, so I see it from the Win7 computer. Might there be a firewall or user right problem ? How to resolve if yes ?
-I tried to launch vrayslave exec on the macpro and I get "error: Failed to start network server: Failed to open listening port ( 48 ) "

I hope you can give me some help. I suppose it's just a basic problem, but I don't really know where to look on the Mac.

regards,

[waaazoo]

I could finally have vray to render on this macpro. As I wanted to install only the standalone, I had to create the folders that simulate the presence of maya ??!!
The only thing is that it renders all black because it can't find the textures. I couldn't mount the host computer volume....
All this mac stuff is pretty complicated !!!

regards

[hellobard]

Hey!
The listening error when starting the slave manually just means that it's already running. Use your Activity Monitor to check if vray.exe is running. To get your textures to render, put your files on a server and open the server on both macs In The finder. Make sure your project is set to the server and you should be good to go. Adding windows slave is a whole other matter... Linux slaves are much easier.

And yes, the standalone makes directories for Maya

[waaazoo]

thanks Bard,

Well actually I meant that I was surprised that the standalone installation did NOT create these directories ! I had to find out, create them, and redo the installation process. I'll try what you told about the finder, but I don't see how that could give the correct path to the vray renderer. I find that windows slaves are really easy to set up but thats again because I have no more idea how a Mac works It's just so long away

cheers

[waaazoo]

Ok, just to know if I am stupid.

My server is a Windows 7 computer. my slave is a MacOsX computer. Vray is running on the slave. I did mount the server drive on the mac by "smb://ipadress/W"
I see the Windows drive on the Finder from the Mac..... and vray still doesn't find the textures ! what am I doing wrong ????

cheers

[hellobard]

Yeah, I had this problem too. There is a fix (in theory).
Vlado told me I could change a vray attribute in my Windows system settings that will make the paths on the PC relate to the Macs system paths (/Volumes/server/folder/folder/) but I never could get that working. If you search in the Maya Beta forum you should be able to find it. Probably easier to ask Vlado. Me, I'm using a Mac as the main computer and only Mac or Linux slaves (with an alias called /Volumes/ in their root).

[waaazoo]

Oh thanks, Bard ! I found some topics about the "VRAY_ASSETS_PATH". Is it that ?
I will have to look how to set it up, didn't find that in the topics I found.

cheers

[hellobard]

Yes! that's it! "VRAY_ASSETS_PATH" is what you're after. Let me know if you get it working and maybe post how you did it so everyone can benefit from your countless hours of punching your computer

[waaazoo]

Sure I'll post this when I found it ! I searched all over the forum, and Vlado always says "it's possible with VRAY_ASSETS_PATH" but I could find nowhere a description on how to do it... I would now probably on windows, but on a Mac..... errr.... no.... I'm going mad for this simple stuff !

[vlado]

How are you running the V-Ray render server? If you are running it from a Terminal, you need to add the following command just before it:

export VRAY_ASSETS_PATH=path/to/textures

Then you can run the V-Ray render server with

/Applications/Autodesk/maya2011/Maya.app/Contents/vray/bin/vrayslave

Best regards,
Vlado

[waaazoo]

here is my setup.

The main workstation (where the maya project is) is a Windows 7 PC with maya and vray as license server. I want to use Macpros under Mac OSX as slaves.
On the slaves I installed Vray as standalone starting as a service.
I would like to be able to DR directly under Maya and via mayabatch.
So far it works, it renders, but the slaves render black buckets, and they can't find the textures.
Should I run the vray slave server manually ?

regards,

olivier

[waaazoo]

ok, I stopped the vray.exe service on the macpro, opened terminal window, exported vray assets path, and restarted via this terminal window vrayslave. It works !
...but.... isn't there a simple way to do that ?

regards,

Olivier

[vlado]

Not at the moment, but we are trying to figure out a way for this...

Best regards,
Vlado

[waaazoo]

ok, thank you Vlado.

regards,

Olivier

[waaazoo]

Actually, with something more simple, I thought about something like writing a script (like a .bat file on PC) to launch automatically the two operations, exporting VRAY_ASSET_PATH and then launch vrayslave. I would know on windows, but on MacOSX i'm lost...

regards,

Olivier