DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30 - [RESOLVED]

[Jackson_cg]

Hi everyone, for reasons beyond my control I've been inactive here for many months and have hardly had a chance to do any rendering for almost as long. Nevertheless, it's finally time to get stuck back into V-Ray and so I thought I'd finally try to set up my wife's laptop as a DR node, but am having no luck. Until I get my new laptop I'm running the old (non-beta) V-Ray 1.05.30.

I've done all the troubleshooting I can, but no matter what I try the node bucket never shows up:

1. Both laptops are up-to-date 32bit XP SP3.

2. Both are on the same workgroup via my wireless router.

3. Both have DRSpawner 1.05.30 installed and running.

4. I've pinged both successfully

5. I activated DR on the master PC.

6. I've enabled asset collection and "Send to each node". (I've also tried sending files to a shared folder)

7. I've added the node IP address in V-Ray DR Settings and resolved servers.

8. I've restarted both systems several times, pinged successfully every time.

Despite all this when I render only 2 buckets (for the Core Duo on the master PC) show up in the VFB.

I've read the manual, searched the Chaos and ASGvis sites and Googled for hours, but this has me completely stumped.

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks in advance,
Jackson

[thomthom]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30

Jackson! The legend is back! w00t!

Not sure why it's not working - but is there a change you are testing a very small scene where the spawner doesn't get time to receive and load it?

[Jackson_cg]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30

LOL, thanks for the welcome back Thom! I feel so out of touch with SU and V-ray I think "newbie" would be more appropriate than "legend".

Thanks for the tip, I tried running a bigger file (6.1Mb) with DR just now, but I still only get my laptop's buckets showing in the VFB. This is driving me crazy.

[dkendig]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30

::hugs Jackson:: There you are!

do any messages appear on the DR Spawner when you're trying to use it? Does it appear to receive the scene?

[Jackson_cg]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30

Hi Devin,

I was just about to reply that no messages appear in DR, either on the master or the slave machine when I closed one of the windows open on the slave machine and saw to my amazement that the DRSpawner was now full of text. I thought I'd troubleshot every possible snaggle including disabling the firewalls on both PCs, but I hadn't realized that when I disabled Zonealarm on the master PC stupid XP automatically activates the XP firewall (even though I've set all firewalls to allow DRSpawner). After disabling Zonealarm and the XP firewalls my slave bucket shows up in the VFB.... I'm a triple-core happy bunny! ;D

Now I'll just have to see how to get my firewalls to behave properly. >

Thanks for the help guys,
Jackson

[thomthom]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30 - [RESOLVED]

Punish them with a red hot poker until they behave. ...works for me...

[Jackson_cg]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30 - [RESOLVED]

Grrr... I'm going firewall crazy now. I'm using Zone Alarm Free on both PCs (just installed it on the slave) and have set up DRSpawner as a Trusted Program in both and ping'd both IPs, but DR won't play ball. It works whenever I disable the firewalls, but otherwise it's no game.

[dkendig]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30 - [RESOLVED]

http://forum.asgvis.com/index.php?topic=8883.0 <-- make sure to allow those ports in your various firewalls.

[Jackson_cg]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30 - [RESOLVED]

That's the catch, apparently it's not possible in the free version of Zone Alarm to allow specific ports, you can only allow certain programs. Sounded ridiculous to me, but I've rooted through ZA, it's help files and Googled like crazy and it just seems that you can't access specific ports without upgrading to ZA Pro.

[Jackson_cg]

Re: DRSpawner Problems- 1.05.30 - [RESOLVED]

Just a quick update for anyone having similar problems: I never managed to get DR working with Zone Alarm firewall running on both my PCs, even though DRSpawner was allowed, but deactivating ZA and using XP's own firewalls with DRSpawner allowed works fine. Not ideal, but a workaround I can live with and it's a sweet feeling to knock 30% off render times just by networking my wife's cheap laptop.