Vray Distributed Render and local render farm Backburner setup

[gfmarsh]

I am new to Maya and Vray. Can anyone recommend additional information on Distributed Rendering setup besides what Chaos has posted on the setup of that. Checking the render log it seems my license is not being validated, although I have Workstation + a 5 render node license. I have gone online to check my server and none of them nodes are engaged even though the render slaves have been registered from each node.

Also looking for Vray- Maya Backburner setup information, as I haven't had much luck with that either for batch rendering. Tutorial suggestions are welcome!

Thanks

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Render Slaves registration is something different than the license configuration.
Every render slave also needs to be configured to look for proper license server, right now they are probably not and that's why you got a licensing error.
I'll find someone from our team who is more competent on the subject to assist you.

[ivan.slavchev]

I am new to Maya and Vray. Can anyone recommend additional information on Distributed Rendering setup besides what Chaos has posted on the setup of that. Checking the render log it seems my license is not being validated, although I have Workstation + a 5 render node license. I have gone online to check my server and none of them nodes are engaged even though the render slaves have been registered from each node.

Also looking for Vray- Maya Backburner setup information, as I haven't had much luck with that either for batch rendering. Tutorial suggestions are welcome!

Thanks

Make sure that:
- The V-Ray render slave is running on the render node machines
- You've pointed the license settings on the render node computers to the license server machine - https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...cense+Settings
- Also TCP ports 20207 and 30304 must be allowed for communication between the slave computers and the worstation.


Regarding Backburner - you can check Autodesk's guide, for example - https://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...E72AF-htm.html
If you have a V-Ray license issue, however, you'll have a problem with network rendering too.

Backburner and V-Ray Distributed Rendering work in different way regarding job distribution. Backburner does not directly support V-Ray DR. This is because Backburner distributes jobs frame by frame - for example Node 1 receives frame 1, Node2 receives frame 2 etc.

Distributed Rendering (by design) distributes EVERY frame between all nodes. This is achieved by dividing the frame to pieces (called "Buckets") that are distributed to the different nodes, rendered, and after that compiled into the ready image (https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3MAYA/Distributed+Rendering). For example - if you have 6 render nodes Node1 will receive 1/6 of the frame's buckets, Node 2 will receive another 1/6 and so on. That way Frame 1 is rendered by all 6 render nodes, after that frame 2 is also rendered by all nodes etc.

As you can see - if you try to render by simultaniously using DR and Backburner with all nodes there will be a problem in rendering, because:

1. Every Render Slave receives a whole different frame to render from Backburner
but also
2. Every Render Slave receives Buckets (or pieces) from every frame one by one from Distributed Rendering's algorithm , including the frames already received from Backburner

The result will be mismatch and problems in rendering.

A way to work around this will be to either:


1. Configure DR on your workstation the way you want and add ONLY the main workstation in Backburner. That way you can schedule jobs in Backburner, they will be submitted correctly to the workstation Frame by Frame and since your main workstation is the only node all frames will go there. The workstation will than redistribute the frames using DR.

2. Use only DR

3. Use only Backburner

Regarding licensing - you don't need to do anyhing additionally - license algoritm is the same no matter if you use Distributed rendering or Backburner (or other render manager).

[gfmarsh]

Am I to point the render slave license to an IPv4 address? I have done so, and it doesn't make any difference, although I was then able to get to Manage Online license App and enable my node on that machine. But this has since disappeared off the online web license server. Two of my other nodes has no such option to Manage Online License Server, and on one of them when I launch it as a slave it quits saying there is a License Server already running. This is very confusing.

So can DR run in Batch mode, where I can render an image sequence or is it limited to one frame? It is my understanding from your literature that it is for one frame jobs.

[gfmarsh]

I went into the Allows Apps Through a Windows Firewall and added vrlservice.exe on my client machine which I think is what is getting it to work on 2 additional node machine so far. The 3 others nodes are still saying "Errors: There is another server running already. " It's puzzling why the others aren't working, as I set them all to my IPv4 address as well in the license settings, they've been added to DR server settings in Maya. Seems like a licensing glitch?


Does running in DR mode from my workstation use up one of my nodes? At present there are three machines rendering, my workstation and two of my nodes, and the licensing server says 4 are engaged with 2 available. What's going on? When I bought this Workstation + 5 Render Node Licenses from Vray US it indicates I can render on up to 6 machines. From their site...

Basic Workstation License	Includes 1 Graphic User Interface (GUI) and 1 V-Ray Render Node.
Workstation + 5 Render Node Licenses	Includes 1 Basic Workstation License and 5 additional Render Nodes. Render on up to 6 of your machines.

Thanks
Greg

[gfmarsh]

Actually I see now that there's 6 nodes listed in total on the online License Server. So that makes sense. I restarted the machines and I guess it reset the tally on the license server online.

[gfmarsh]

I re-installed Vray on all the problematic render nodes and that fixed it. I am glad I am talking to myself here.

[Karol.Osinski]

I wonder of there is any new solution for using Backburner + DR without problems since then?

[yolov]

Are you having any particular issues? I believe the issues discussed here were related to a setup configuration and there shouldn't be a problem running the setup.

[Karol.Osinski]

Hey yolov. Thanks for asking. Nope cuz I haven't used backburner yet but planning to in near future so just wanted to know if there are is any new solution, just in case thanks