Distributed Rendering

[BillyRaygun]

I'm curious as to when the DR Spawner determines when to initiate additional processors.

Science Project:
When using distributed rendering I'm noticing the following.

1) DR Spawner initiates on slave computer, but seems not to contribute for a while. Then is seems to kick in.

2) Main computer is dual core, processes two threads, starts to render, then eventually, the third core (from the slave) kicks in. Why doesn't this contribute immediately?

3) DR Spawners initiates, spits out commands, prefiltering light cache, LC time interval is <0.0000, 0.0000> etc. While this is going on, no buckets are visible. Do I assume three threads are being used to generate the LC?

I should point out that the main computer merges light cache... does this answer my question?

It just seems as if the DR Spawner, although working, is delayed. Any explanations or feedback regarding the above?

Thanks in advance,
Bill

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Distributed Rendering

There is a certain amount of time that it takes for the DR spawner to have enough information to begin contributing to the render. The first component of this is from the host computer compiling the information, the second component is sending that information over the network, and lastly the spawner has to process that compiled information so that it can understand what needs to be done. After that the spawner will start the rendering. The more info (geometry...images if you're sending them to the node) that has to be sent to the node the longer that will take to get there.

With LC, the image is processed as a whole, so there will be no buckets (DR or not). More importantly though, with LC the nodes do not actually contribute to the render process. Basically the nodes calculate the same information as the host computer and it gets tossed away. This is something that is in the hands of the Chaos Group, as it will most likely take a change in the core processes of Light Cache.

[BillyRaygun]

Re: Distributed Rendering

Thank you Dalomar for the detailed response. Based on what you said, DR Spawner is working properly.