DR monitor

[BVA]

Would it be possible to add a sort of basic monitor to DR? It will be nice to be able to see if all slaves connect correctly when the render start and be warned if a slave die halfway through a render.
I found that often the render machines bomb out but there are no warning so lots of time get wasted before I log onto the slave to see if they are rendering or not.

[BVA]

Is it normal that the servers crash frequently? I don't really get any error message, just this screen attached?

[vladimir.nedev]

That might be related to the wrong buckets issue I am trying to fix currently. Basically the client sends an invalid irradiance map
to the servers. I am not sure it can cause them to crash though. From the screen-shot it seems the crash happened exactly
at that time, when the irradiance prepass was done and the map is supposed to be received from the client. But I might be
imagining stuff.

Does it crash if you don't use an irradiance map or on other scenes ?

You can try starting the render slaves with the "-verboseLevel=4" option added to the shortcut in the start menu. It will cause the standalone to
give more information in the command prompt.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[BVA]

Hi Vladimir

I am not sure when it crash. It happens on all my projects but not always.
Also, I have 10 slaves and only one or two will crash, but not the same ones every time. So, it is very random.

I adapted a new workflow. When I start a new project I immediately tell it to save the irradiance map and light cache to files. So I will just keep doing my drafts till I am happy and fire off a full res render. If I see the buckets render bad I cancel the render and tell it to use the irradiance map that was saved. Then at least it renders right without hassle...problem is I render through the night and can't always look at the monitor I will then look at the slaves, sometimes some crashed, sometimes not...very random.

I am not sure if it can have an influence but I realized that rendering with modo materials will be fine, as soon as I add vray materials the buckets start becoming an issue. Can the materials be linked to the issue?
I will add the "-verboseLevel=4" string to my servers now, maybe we can pick something up.

Thanks!

[vladimir.nedev]

For the issue I am fixing at the moment, the type of material shouldn't matter. But it's a synchronization issue, so
anything that affects the speed at which the different computations are done can possibly cause the issue to show up or not.
I will write back here once the fix is in the nightly builds, hopefully you will have more projects to render with V-Ray at that stage
and will be able to give it a thorough test.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

The fix is in the 20141113 nightly build for V-Ray for MODO. Please install it on all render servers and render clients, and tell me if you run into the problem again.
If you run a lot of tests and everything seems fine, please tell me as well, so I know the situation has improved.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[BVA]

Great, thanks Vladimir!

I need to get something out today, tomorrow I will render a few images and let you know.

Regards
Barend

[BVA]

Hi Vladimir

It looks VERY promising. I rendered about 5 drafts and haven't had 1 issue... It is with a scene that didn't render previously.
I will keep testing tomorrow and let you know.

Regards
Barend

[BVA]

HI Vladimir

I have done a lot of renders on a few scenes, rendered at various resolutions. I have not had one funny bucket or server crashing on me.
I think you did solve the issue, thanks!!!

Now port it to mac and I will buy it!

Regards
Barend

[vladimir.nedev]

Hi Barend,

Glad to hear that. Hopefully the issue doesn't crop up again.
I am working on the Mac OS X version at the moment. The main problem will be integrating the VFB within MODO, but I haven't gotten there yet.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev