Pointing the DR Bitmap directories in the right direction. Vray Maya 2013

[jpwestmas]

Hi there I'm new to Distributed Rendering but I did manage to get the thing running between two computers. So the bucket distribution works great. . . but my problem is that the Render Server App. that I installed on my second comp doesn't know how to download the texture maps from my Render Client computer . . . the render server/slave won't download them and load them into Vray standalone. So I assume what I have to do is to copy the texture bitmaps to my render server locally correct? If so where do I put them and how can I change the directory so that Vray Standalone can find them?

I can't find the official documentation on this bitmap issue so sorry if this is a rudimentary question.

[Morbid Angel]

this is not an issue for vray or any renderer for that matter. When you are working on more then one machine you need a unified network directory where all of the machines can access the maps. Alternatively you can copy the maps manually to the location which is exactly the same on your main machine to your slave machine and then vray will find those maps, but the first method is a more recommended one.

[jpwestmas]

Thankyou for verifying my assumptions.

So there is no way to change the path for which the standalone looks for textures while the client renderer renders from a separate sourceimages folder directory?

I guess this is why a lot of people work directly off the C: drive to make directories more simple. heh.

One last question: when you say WHERE ALL THE MACHINES CAN ACCESS THE BITMAPS. Does that mean Vray standalone downloads them automatically? Or do I just make sure the directories are identical between machines so that I put the texture maps on each machine locally but under the same directory names?

Got it working! Thank you

[vlado]

Glad that you got it working The latest nightly builds also have an option to transfer and cache any missing assets from the client machine to render servers.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jpwestmas]

Hi vlado, that's good news, I appreciate that.

So I was doing some distributed rendering on a 1920x1080 HD image and I noticed that my renders were a tad faster just using my local i7 processor alone than doing DR with my two other computers which have an i5 and an i3. So I'm assuming that I would need several more computers to really take advantage of DR correct? Note, I turned off light cache and just used brute force for primary only. Or is this a MBPS issue, I'm using 100MBPS ethernet cables. With two other computers would it be more wise to render with standalone on those without DR?

[vlado]

If you check the CPU usage on the other two machines, are they doing anything (i.e. is the CPU usage 100%)?

Best regards,
Vlado

[jpwestmas]

yep 100% CPU! It's using all the Ram too on both of them. 4GB. Big Texture maps

[vlado]

Ok then. How fast are the i3 and i5 compared to the i7? Do you use the light cache GI engine?

Best regards,
Vlado

[jpwestmas]

well the i3 is probably half the speed of the i7 and the i5 is 2/3rds the speed I guess. I haven't done any solid clock exams but I assume I just need a lot more comps to make a difference with DR on an HD image. OR I don't know what I'm doing with my network but I don't know how to clock these speeds, as I am an amateur with DR and networking.

No I am not using light cache because that takes even longer to render with DR. So I just have brute force GI in the primary slot and the secondary is set to "none".

[Morbid Angel]

by the way, there is a way to point textures to custom locations which I forgot about. You need to declare a user environment variable during maya startup, which will point to your custom location, for example:

SET texPath=C:/temp

Then you can use this to start your working copy of maya, but in the renderslave you can have another version of this startup where it points to a different location. Then in your file node you can have a path like this {texPath}/mytextures/filename.exr
During rendering vray will sub the proper path according to the declared variable.

[jpwestmas]

That's good to know that it is possible. . .thanks!