I am trying to render across 4 computers. My main one has a shared drive, and it’s mapped as S: on all of those computers.
I’ve gathered all my textures into one folder on that S: drive, and the path goes just like that - “S:\folder\texture.jpg”. Is this supposed to be enough? At first it didnt work, then using the asset tracker i highlighted all of those textures, and said ‘resolve to UNC location’.
There’s a difference between ‘you’ starting a program and a service being started automatically, they can use different credentials and thus have different rights regarding network/file-access.
On the slaves: disable the spawner in ‘Services’ and start it manually from the start-menu. See if that makes a difference.
Btw: I use the Relink Bitmaps-script from Moondoggie to reassign UNC-paths to bitmaps, works like a charm.
I was starting it manually from the start-menu, but right after the install i went to ‘register vrayspawner as service’.
Like i said, it worked like a charm yesterday. Even now, using the same scene from yesterday it actually works, all the slaves load the textures.
But, the same scene, just a later save (i worked on it today) produces these problems. All of the maps (same maps) are mapped in the same way, one works, the other one doesnt.
I think ruudys suggestion solved the problem. I am still a bit confused, because i think that even before i had done what he suggested, i could render the scene that i’ve set up previously, with no problems.
We’ve just switched over to running spawner as a service because we wanted to use pstools to start/stop spawner with one click from a workstation. When we made the switch, we had mixed luck in getting DR to behave. Sometimes it would work. And next time some of the buckets would be missing textures. Very strange.
So, I tried changing all bitmap paths to UNC (using asset tracking) and so far (a few hours later at any rate) it seems to be a lot more stable. No more missing textures…so far!
Beware that you most likely have to use the run as options to start services and user tools as the right user. As the standard system user might misbehave in a lot of occasions. For example you cannot launch GUI apps directly as remotely started programs may not create a gui for security reasons.
Sorry for reviving the thread, but it seems that im having the exact same problems as before. I do not understand the concept of XP logon and users, nor the concept behind services.
I basically want to run the spawner manually, by clicking on a shortcut that i have placed on the desktop. Even if i do this, some machines do not pick up textures. When i check services, i se that the spawner is running. When i tell it to be disabled, it still gets back to “startup type : automatic”. How should i set up this service, when im running a user without a password and logon screen?