Setting up Distributed Rendering

[l1tay2]

1. Seems the netgear should be able to provide a decent speed.

Alex - Do you recommend me using a plain ethernet cable versus the usb wireless adapter?

Previous question below.
Also - I do not use a network card to connect, I use an older wireless USB adapter. Do you recommend I replace this with a cat-6 Ethernet hard-wired cable?

[yolov]

Wireless networks will possibly have lower speed the longer the distance. Wired connections will maintain a good transfer speed over longer distance.
There must be some tools that you can use to check the download speed from the router to the adapter.

[l1tay2]

Alex - The ethernet cable fixed the transfer delay. The wireless usb wifi adapter was the culprit.

I just purchased a separate render node for the slave machine just to speed up the render a bit. I will let you know if I have any issues configuring.

Thank you so much for helping me troubleshoot my system. I applaud you.

[l1tay2]

Alex - I just upgraded to Maya 2017 and downloaded The latest Vray for Maya 2017 for my workstation and Vray Standalone for My Render Station (Render Pro).

Adaptive Subdivision: When I check "Use Distributed Rendering" and "Use Local Machine" together, I only see my Main Workstation buckets (8 Cores), and not the Render Pro Buckets (16 Cores). The Render Pro is receiving information, but I do not see the buckets. When I just select "Use Distributed Rendering", I see all of my cores working.

I purchased a universal render node a while back so I could use both machines to render.

Error Message: // Warning: V-Ray : Could not use any of the selected (1) hosts for distributed rendering!

Why is this or is this a bug?

Thanks!

[yolov]

If you're using two machines to render at the same time, each will need its own render node license.
How many machines vs. how many render node licenses do you have?
And another question - why are you using the adaptive subdivision sampler?

[l1tay2]

Ylov - As I stated in the previous reply, I purchased an additional universal render node in July. I was able to successfully render with both machines using DR until I upgraded to Maya 2017.

I have two machines and two render node licenses, the render license that came with vray and an additional universal render node I purchased in July.

Does the universal render node i purchased not apply to Maya 2017?

The reason I was using AS, is I saw an error message and wanted to see if I could see the render buckets working all together, that's where I discovered that I was only able to render with one machine at a time, versus at the same time with Maya 2016, even though i have two render node licenses.

[yolov]

The render node license should work for all Maya versions.
If you're getting " Could not use any of the selected (1) hosts for distributed rendering!", then you cannot connect to the slave for some reason.
It could be one of several things:
* the settings you've entered in maya are not correct (IP or port number mismatch, although the defaults should work)
* the render slave is not responding because a firewall is stopping its network communiction
* it could be that the slave is busy if you're rendering another job there (although unlikely as far as I understand)

I would start by checking any firewall settings on the slave machine, you can also try reinstalling the slave and make sure you have enabled the "add firewall exception" tick in the installer (cusomize settings in the installer).
If it was a licensing problem, the slave would actually send a message to the main machine that it has no licenses, so it should not be that.
Is the slave registered as a service or do you start it manually? When you get the " Could not use any ..." message, can you log to the slave machine and see the log of the slave (if started manually it should be in the terminal you've started it from, if it's a service, you should see a vray log file in the user's temp directory") - there could be pointers to what the problem might be.

[l1tay2]

- If you're getting " Could not use any of the selected (1) hosts for distributed rendering!", then you cannot connect to the slave for some reason.

It will connect to the slave if I do not check "Use Local Machine".

- * the render slave is not responding because a firewall is stopping its network communiction

Again, It will connect to the slave if I do not check "Use Local Machine".

* it could be that the slave is busy if you're rendering another job there (although unlikely as far as I understand)

This is not the case.

I start the license server and render slave manually on both machines each time i want to use DR.

[yolov]

That's indeed odd.
Does any of the machines get licensing errors? I know I asked, but just to be safe. Can you confirm the license settings are correct on both machines?
We could make a remote session and try to debug this if this is acceptable for you.

[l1tay2]

Thank you for your help with this. I am at work now, and I can not do a remote session unless it is after 4pm CT US. I would like to do that though if at all possible. I do not receive licensing errors.

My license settings are what I have always used, and it has worked fine.

Main Machine: localhost, 30304
Slave Machine: Main Machine IP, 30304

[yolov]

That's out of our working hours. What's the earliest in the day that works for you?
Another question - just to confirm - do you see 2 render node licenses in the license summary when you open up localhost:30304/getstatus in a browser on your main machine (where the license server is running)?
Might it be that the dongle wasn't updated with the new additional license?
(I know I've asked about licensing errors, but I'm just trying to rule that one out).

[yolov]

Can you also attach the logs that you can find in the temp directories of both machines?
You should be looking for vraysl_log_20207.txt on the slave machine and vray4maya_log.txt on the main machine.

[l1tay2]

Again,

The dongle was updated weeks ago when i purchased the additional license. Here is my summary from July. All of this happened after updating to Maya 2017, and installing the latest Vray for Maya 2017 yesterday.



I DID reinstall the Wibukey Drivers on the main machine. Would that overwrite Dongle information?

Also, when i get home today, I will pull another getstatus to MAKE SURE it is still detecting two render node licenses.

As I said before... everything worked fine on Monday of this week. That tells me its something to do with the install of Maya 2017 and the latest Vray for Maya.

[yolov]

Thank you for all the info and I am sorry if this conversation has been frustrating for you. We'll try and set up a remote session asap to figure out what's wrong. And no, the 2017 install in no way overwrites that information.

[l1tay2]

Where are the temp files located?

Also, the summary is showing two render node licenses.