Same here, DR all day long, stills, anims…
doing DR for animation is a waste of cpu time
all spawner must wait until the last bucket of the current frame is done
communication between master and spawner drains cpu power too - especialy if buckts are very small
DR is fine for GI bake animation cam fly
still image render
vlado
it whould be cool to have one “spawner” to support all vray appliactions
it is imho a good invest in the future onced vray run on several apps. DR
i not mean running DR from maya using cinema4d spawner
i mean maya DR starts and “spawner” starts the maya spawner
its “sick” to have separat spawner for 3dsmax 9 + 2008 + 2009 + maya 8.5 + maya 2008 + cinema 11 …
guess you get me
further more
print warning or error DR if master Vray version is different to spawner Vray version
and
print warning or error DR if master region settings is set to “,” but spawner use “.”
most DR error and problems are related to the points abouve
my 2 cents
Yep, I use DR all the time also. DR is fantastic for stills…the more cpus, the quicker the render 
which must be a good thing !
miraldo, isn’t copying all the files locally a little annoying? i have all textures, irrmaps, vray proxies, point caches, etc on my file server. are you doing this manually?
Well, to ease the burden of copying the files to each machine I create a batch file to automate the process.
For instance, if I want to update all Vrmaps on all slave machines:
copy *.vrmap \\slave01\work\
copy *.vrmap \\slave02\work\
copy *.vrmap \\slave03\work\
...
This way, every time I change or create a new a file, I just start the batch and everything is copied to each folder on the remote machines.
It does take a little more time than using UNC paths but, since I started using this method, I never got a “faulty” bucket anymore.
Hehe, have you looked at how many mental ray satellite services you have installed But at least as far as 3ds Max is concerned, you can run the DR spawner for the latest 3ds Max version only. It will be able to process DR jobs from all previous 3ds Max versions too.
Best regards,
Vlado
We use backburner all day long for still and animation. The spawner works for us sometimes but we would probably use it more if it were more tightly integrated with BB. I guess I have not used it because I’m a creature of habit and BB just works. Should I be using DR vs BB?
Why DR if BB works?
Hi, I use DR per Vray for Rhino daily. It’s great, so easy to use. I like, that all textures are automatic send to the nodes or a shared folder (maybe it’s a special VfR feature)
Two wishes:
* support of PPT and light cache calculation
* maybe it’s possible to write a little tool, that watch the drspawner.exe and if it crash, a new one will be automatic started
assuming max2009 64 bit spawner have all plugins for max9 32bit
if it whould be that easy …
even max k9 64bit cant open a k9 32 bit scene without error
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/16350/
i could tell you stories ..
I Use it daily, and now that I’m finally beating in the wonders that is DR for test rendering to my coworkers, we could REALLY use some more feedback to see who is rendering using what machines. right now i’ve got something rigged up that writes out the username of the person who is using a machine if that machine is rendering for DR and a tiny app that can ‘check’ if the farm is busy.
more ties to backburner (Or at least, knowledge of whether BB is rendering) would be nice also, though i’d prefer if that is something that can be customized.. (in many cases using dr while rendering for backburner isn’t a problem), just slower for both things 
but in most cases, the DR testing is going to be more important to an extent than the random frame that will finish overnight anyway.. except in rare cases.
Basically, if anyone has good ideas for how to make DR friendly to use in midsize studios that would be wonderful
I think something along the lines of a priority system that could be set up for users.. Flag X number of machines as prioritized for Y user, then you could allow Z user to use the full farm for all tests, but when Y user starts a rendering, then he takes back the X machines on render start, and picks up any others that open up as the rendering continues.. then i could just flag say.. 3 DR slaves per artist, and let everyone keep everything ‘enabled’ at all times, and at worst, an artist trying to send a job would have his machine and his 3 ‘prioritized’ slaves.. at best, he grabs the whole farm..
Another idea/thing, which i think may be where your question was coming from to begin with based on a comment i saw in your vray user group video
It sure would be nice if machines that dont have max installed, but could be rigged up with a vray standalone for instance could be used for DR <hint hint> 
and maybe something for us end users to rig up, but something like a Screen Saver that could be used to flag a machine as possible to use for DR when the user is not at the desk.. possible to do now (And actually, not that difficult either), but it would require a bit more robust failure procedures for removing a machine from the DR pool of an already rendering job.
Yes, always.
And unlike problems others are having, it is incredibly stable and reliable. Rarely does a node fail. And if one does, it only takes a second to restart the service with a script.
I’ve not used DR yet, but am planning to set up a small render farm soon. I don’t know if I’m asking the world here, but it would be fantasic if you could use nodes for DR that didn’t require Max or windows, just Linux and Vray node info.
We couldnt do our job with out it … well we could you split lines .. but you know thats CR*P …
DR rocks but it needs to be a little more than just DR, we need more control like adding machines on the fly and free up machines for example …
And of course the (as mentioned many times before) DR window needs to be expandable, and the ability to multy select machines like shift and control when clicking the nodes .. 200 machines takes a lot of clicking and un-clicking between 5 designers ! …
Natty;)
The realms of Stand-Alone i think ..
what about plugins? is the standalone app capable of tackling the lack of plugin support?
I wouldnt know mate … this is why you need max to be installed i guess..
DR has been a &^%^%& pain in the $%$ for me, need to get it sorted asap, which brings me to my next question, Ideally I would like to get someone that knows networks and has a basic understanding of vray to sort it, but cannot find such a person. I can ping machines from each other but cant get DR to see them when rendering, blood pressure begining to rise…
do you have users and groups set up ? with permissions ?
yeah…i just wish i could ditch Adesk…