Distributed rendering, Hosts occasionally join in render...

[tinuz]

what exactly determines if a host will join a DR render?

Because I have renders that sometimes will make use of the hosts but sometimes they won't. Ofcourse all obvious settings are ok:

-in maya DR list turned on
-hosts are pingable
-vray is running on hosts

the only thing I can think of is maybe network traffic that causes a delay in respond time or something?? but then again we have gigabit network with only 10 mac's and not that much traffic

is there more I can check? can you "force" it?

[vlado]

Do you see any errors in the V-Ray console on the hosts?

Best regards,
Vlado

[tinuz]

no errors, only the DR message lines:

[2010/Nov/17|14:26:50] V-Ray: Preprocessing for distributed rendering!
[2010/Nov/17|14:26:51] V-Ray: Finished preprocessing for distributed rendering!
[2010/Nov/17|14:26:51] V-Ray debug: Starting DR
[2010/Nov/17|14:26:51] V-Ray: Using 0 hosts for distributed rendering.


oops.. misread your post, I haven't checked the consoles on the hosts..
actually I don't have a console on the hosts, but vray is running (and sometimes working),
I guess because it's running as a service?
how can you invoke the console for vray if you haven't started it via a console?

[tinuz]

ok I have one host that I started manually see output below:
last weekend i did a render which used all my hosts as it should, but today no host will join in the DR anymore


Last login: Mon Dec 6 12:32:02 on ttys000
facebox:~ uncinc$ /Applications/ChaosGroup/V-Ray/Maya2011-x64/bin/vrayslave ; exit;
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] Reading configuration from "/Applications/Autodesk/maya2011/Maya.app/Contents/vray/bin//vrayconfig.xml"
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] ===============================================
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] V-Ray Standalone, version 1.5.01 for x64
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] Copyright (C) 2000-2010 Chaos Group Ltd. All rights reserved.
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] Use -credits option for additional third-party copyright notices.
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15]
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] Build from Jun 11 2010, 16:53:48
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] Compiled with GCC-compatible compiler, version 4
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] Operating system is Mac OS X
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15]
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] V-Ray core version is 1.90.03
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] ===============================================
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15]
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:15] Loading plugins from "/Applications/Autodesk/maya2011/Maya.app/Contents/vray/vrayplugins/libvray_*.so"
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:16] 93 plugin(s) loaded successfully
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:16] Finished loading plugins.
[2010/Dec/6|12:32:16] Entering server mode - waiting for render requests on port 20207. Press Ctrl+C to exit.

[Zdravko]

There are several conditions that must be fulfilled in order to invoke the nodes in DR:
1. Correct license configuration – must point to the license server IP/host.
2. Identical V-Ray versions installed on each render node.
3. The port which V-Ray uses for DR – the best solution to assure that the proper port is used is to define it.
4. Related to the previous – Firewall Configuration must be set so that the ports V-Ray is using (for licensing and for distribution) to be available.
The log that is useful in case that a problem occurs is mayaRenderLog.txt which is located on /Documents/maya folder.

[tinuz]

In my case 1,2 and 4 are correctly setup

3. it's always using 20207, I'm guessing you can define another by using a flag something like: vrayslave -port 666??

do you mean that log is on the hosts? or the machine that started the job? (can't find it on either one in /Documents/maya)

[ivaylo.ivanov]

I'm not quite sure, but I think stand-alone use 20204 by default for some reason (maybe because of Max), but the slaves and Maya DR use 20207. So, it's good idea always to set the port with -portNumber=20207 when start rendering from the server.