Swarm - exclude local machine and missing materials

[skavan]

Hi,

Using v-ray Next for SU19.
I have machine A, with Sketchup installed and it's also a swarm node.
I have machine B, which is both a license server and a swarm node.
I have machine C, which is just a swarm node.

Spent a lot of time trying to get this all working, with mixed success:

Issue #1:
If the scene has missing material paths, the network job is aborted. This can happen a lot with sketchup, when working on a file created by someone else, where a copy of the material is inside the SU File, but there is a path to the material that is invalid. Is there a way to have the render go ahead anyway -- albeit with missing materials in some nodes. Even the v-ray sample exterior scene has this issue and fails in a swarm setting.
Out of interest, where does Swarm store the assets in a Network job?

Issue #2:
Machine A is my weakest machine, and I'd like to exclude it from the Network render. I have disabled the Machine A swarm node, but it is still fully engaged in the rendering process (100% CPU) --- even though it is not assigned or rendering in the Swarm GUI. I'm sure there used to be a way to exclude the local machine, but I can't find it!

Any ideas?

[georgi.georgiev]

Hi,

Apologies for the late reply!

Regarding issue #1, a workaround is to enter the code provided below in SketchUp's Ruby Console and set the parameter to false, so the render nodes do not aborted the rendering process. This behavior has been optimized in the upcoming hotfix update!

VRay::LiveScene.active["/SettingsOptions"][:misc_abortOnMissingAsset] = false

In respect to issue #2, you could toggle ON the Cap CPU Utilization parameter in the V-Ray Asset Editor > Swarm rollout, to limit the utilization of the local machine.