Questions on distributed rendering

[Pixero]

1. Will distributed rendering cause a lot of network traffic that would slow down the network?

2. Can you "release" a render node in mid render and another node finishes that bucket or will that ruin the render?
I'm asking this because I'm about to start a big animation render on several pc's at work and if its not finished when those people need their pc's back I wont be able to "borrow" them.

3. Can you set the nodes to render a whole frame each instead of coworking on every frame?

4. Can you start rendering a saved SketchUp file without needing to start SketchUp.

5. Can you start rendering on the nodes only and keep working on your own pc?

6. SketchUp lets you set a transition time between scenes/key frames and Vray sets the frames per second.
Would it be possible to set Vray to re render a certain frame (not a keyframe/scene/page)if something went wrong in that perticular frame?


If not I think these would be great features to add.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Questions on distributed rendering

1. Will distributed rendering cause a lot of network traffic that would slow down the network?

DR does cause alot more information to be transfered across your network...the degree to which that slows it down depends on your network...but the short answer, for the most part, is yes

2. Can you "release" a render node in mid render and another node finishes that bucket or will that ruin the render?

Right now I would believe that it would ruin the render. Allot of that extended functionality of picking up/dropping nodes mid render is something that I think is available with vfMax, but the capabilities for that functionality is through Backburner, Autodesk's Render Server Manager. That means that it may take us a while to get that kind of functionality within our own system.

I'm asking this because I'm about to start a big animation render on several pc's at work and if its not finished when those people need their pc's back I wont be able to "borrow" them.

I don't believe that DR is properly setup to work with animations. A user a little while back said that the nodes helped out with the first frame, but didn't jump in for the rest of them. Joe was looking into that and has been spending allot of time with DR, so its possible that that gets cleared up in the upcoming service release. At this point, your best bet for doing a big animation is to split the animation into separate files, so that each file can be rendered on a different computer.

3. Can you set the nodes to render a whole frame each instead of coworking on every frame?

That is network rendering, which requires some kind of "server" to send out frames and communicate with all of the available computers (thats what Backburner that I mentioned above is). This is something that we have been looking at putting together ourselves, so this is a ways off to say the least. In short...at this time no

4. Can you start rendering a saved SketchUp file without needing to start SketchUp.

Well No, but there is something called a V-Ray scene file that can be outputted right before a rendering. This scene file could then be taken into the V-ray studio (not out yet, but on the chopping block) and could be rendered with out the need for sketchup. The studio itself is something that falls more on the shoulders of the ChaosGroup, so I'm not sure exactly whats been happening with that.

5. Can you start rendering on the nodes only and keep working on your own pc?

This is something that has been asked for, and I believe Joe has said its a possibility (I myself would like it). The host computer itself won't be completely free of work because it will have to distribute/retain the relavent info to all the slaves, but it can at least not have to render any buckets.

6. SketchUp lets you set a transition time between scenes/key frames and Vray sets the frames per second.
Would it be possible to set Vray to re render a certain frame (not a keyframe/scene/page)if something went wrong in that perticular frame?

I can see how this would be an issue, and I think it might be a thing where there needs to be a combination of work from us and SU. Right now I don't believe that it is possible to access the camera location of a specific frame...which makes it harder for us. Typically in other packages theres a timeline editor, which you can access those very easily, so the fact that there's not one is SU make things a little difficult. I think that might be something that we could do on our own, but then we'd have to load up the whole sequence and calculate where the camera was...it would be very dirty thing to set up. I'll let Joe give you a yay or nay on the possibility of that one.

If not I think these would be great features to add.

I agree that allot of these features would be great, but a number of these are also things that are readily supported in more mature rendering platforms (I mean the host application, not v-ray). Its part of our growth to get all of those things in there, but its a matter of time as well.

[pnavarra]

Re: Questions on distributed rendering

I don't believe that DR is properly setup to work with animations.  A user a little while back said that the nodes helped out with the first frame, but didn't jump in for the rest of them. Joe was looking into that and has been spending allot of time with DR, so its possible that that gets cleared up in the upcoming service release.  At this point, your best bet for doing a big animation is to split the animation into separate files, so that each file can be rendered on a different computer.

Does the problem is corrected at today?
Vray Version in SUPro6 : 01.00.74
With this version : Other frames are not rendered by slaves but I saw that the process is still occupated like if it was rendering something.

[Pixero]

Re: Questions on distributed rendering

Answering my own question 6: Yes you can now. Thanks to me.
Download my Rubyscript jsFrameStep at www.pixero.com

[pnavarra]

Re: Questions on distributed rendering

Many Thanks.
Coold you please tell me how does it works?

[Pixero]

Re: Questions on distributed rendering

First set the frames per second you use in your animation.
Typically 24 for movies, 30 for NTSC and 25 for PAL and 15 for web.
Then type the frame number you want to jump to.
Its meant first for fixing troublesome frames in an animation.