Distributed Rendering Queue

[Lilmac024]

I am currently trying to set up a render farm for my school. I know, it's an awfully large undertaking, but have figured out quite a bit. I can get the DR to work perfectly fine for one machine using others as slaves. However, the question I have is whether it's possible to create a queue so that multiple students could submit jobs, log off of lab computers, etc. while still utilizing the idea of DR. I know that there is a fundamental difference between Distributed Rendering and what I'm wanting...just was curious if there is a way to set something like this up.

Thanks!

~Matt

[doelay]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

Here's a little info about how DR Spawner works.
http://forum.asgvis.com/index.php?to...37370#msg37370

You might want to try out the batch render. You need to load the BatchRender plug in through plug in manager.
http://software.asgvis.com/index.php...emid=439&uid=0

[fpedrogo]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

Unfortunately we can't setup our DRSpawner to Queue.


Best

[Lilmac024]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

Thanks guys. It's not that the DR isn't working. I can get it to work, the problem becomes when we have many students trying to send many renderings at the same time. We have about 300 students and are trying to figure out a way set this up for all students.

On a somewhat related note how can I code the drspawner.exe to run as a local service. I ran the following command:

sc create DRSpawner binPath= "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ASGvis\DRSpawner\DRSpawner.exe" start= auto | net start DRSpawner


and it created the service correctly but it won't run or start from services. I tried as local "System" service and as a domain admin service. it only runs when a user is logged in. I get "Could not start DRSpawner service on Local Computer Error:1053 The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion"

We're trying to run a script so that the DRspawner will be running even if no user account is logged into a certain machine.

[fpedrogo]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

We can run DR as a services yet. That is something that we are planing to have in a future.

[dkendig]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

The main problem I believe, is that the DR Spawner doesn't have a mode that has no UI or output by default. You could try playing around with redirecting it's out put in a batch file or something, but I think we've already tried that. We did make a little app that redirected the output and allowed you run the DR Spawner as a service, but it's never really been thoroughly tested, and I'm not sure where it is. This is something that a lot of users have requested though, so hopefully we'll be able to implement this feature in one of our upcoming releases.

[wcmansp]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

The Microsoft Resource Kit tool srvany (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137890) will allow DRSpawner to run as a service, at least on XP machines. If V-Ray (we're using V-Ray for Rhino) is already installed and in a consistent location a little effort with a freeware packager (e.g. Advanced Installer) can produce an .msi with the srvany files and a .reg key that establishes the service; this can be deployed using a GPO for Software Installation. The firewall settings (which can also be done via GPO) can be tightened to the subnets desired.

One additional piece we found useful, when running a render cluster on shared hardware, is imagecfg, another (old) Microsoft Resource Kit tool. It's a little hard to find -- here's one location (http://www.robpol86.com/index.php/ImageCFG). DRSpawn likes to use all the processors on a machine; imagecfg will restrict it to the number of cores you choose, leaving cores always available for console users. The syntax is terse -- the clearest explanation/example might be in this document (http://www.tmurgent.com/WhitePapers%...orAffinity.pdf) in the inset on page 9. Once a core restriction is set for an application there is no specific "undo" to allow it once again to use all available cores; instead you just use imagecfg to generate a new setting that includes all the cores on the machine.

[wcmansp]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

Going back to the initial question -- is it possible to inexpensively set up a render farm management system that provides job submission, queueing, job notification and uses DR -- there is an interesting combination of factors that makes this possible. One is that Deadline, a commercial renderfarm management application that supports Rhino rendering, is available for free (but limited to only two slaves in the renderfarm). The other is that each Rhino copy essentially manages its own distributed rendering with V-Ray. Combine these two and you have a inexpensive V-Ray renderfarm with a professional front-end.

Deadline works by having its clients installed on the slave machines launch the requested application (e.g. Rhino), directing these applications to render via their own Deadline scripts, and returning the result to a repository. If each of the two slaves had a copy of Rhino configured for distributed rendering, each slave could take advantage of multiple DR machines (number limited by OS) for leveraging this work.

Deadline (4.0 just released at the end of January) provides a number of bells and whistles for queue management. The client is free to download so any user can submit jobs. A little thought on how the repository system is designed (e.g. possibly multiple repositories with different permissions, and a copy application to move jobs from one to the other) would allow any user to submit a job but, once copied into the other repository, only be able to read the progress of their submission and not to change it or any other user's jobs. This may be useful in a student environment.

If there is interest in pursuing this with Deadline, be sure to get the Rhino patch in one of their forum articles; the initial 4.0 download wouldn't work for Rhino without the patch applied.

[Micha_cg]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

Hi, where can be found more infos and the download for Deadline? Is there a homepage?

[farined]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

Hi Micha:

I think the site for Deadline is http://software.franticfilms.com/, but there seem to be no info about the software.

Farid

[wcmansp]

Re: Distributed Rendering Queue

http://software.primefocusworld.com