Net-rendering Irradiance Map ?

I’m pretty new to Vray, I have gradually been convincing them here at work that it is the bees knees, finally they have decided to use a GI animation for a big project - Gulp. I am doing 5 different animations for a sequence and need to know if there is anyway to network render the irrandiance map.
In case I am messing up my description - I have a renderfarm on 9 machines, the way I have done my network tests so far has been to render the irradiance map on the main machine and then net-render as usual - is there anyway I can do the rendering for the irradiance map on the farm ?
While I’m here I’ll ask two other questions - the scene I am doing is a gallery which is lit by a skylight. I am using the Vray environment override to create all my illumination flooding through the glass roof. It looks stunning. I want to add some additional hits but when I add a light the overall lighting changes completely - it is as if the addition of a light turns off the illumination from the environment map - is there something I am doing wrong.
The other question is simple what is the relationship between the Global photon map and the irradiance map - do you use one in lew of the other or do they both work at the same time ?

Thanks for you patience.

I’d post some frames but I’m not sure quite how to do it on this forum.

Adam H.Stewart

this is possible

this technique is only for camera movement

for example an animation of 300 frames

vray parameters
in global switch don’t render final image

Vray advanced irradiance map parameters
-choose incremental add to curent map in
Advanced irradiance map parameters
don’t delete: ok
Auto save:ok ‘‘animation irmap01’’

in your common parameters
-every Nth frames: 25 if your camera movement are not to fast

range 0-100

net render: ok

render

in render output

don’t save file

choose computer 1

same think with computer 2

Auto save:ok ‘‘animation irmap02’’

range 100-200

and so on

when you have your three irmap

lauch imap viewer merge the three irmap

save ‘‘animation irmap 123’’

in max
vray parameters
in global switch render final image

Vray advanced irradiance map parameters
-choose from file : ‘‘animation irmap 123’’

in your common parameters
-every Nth frames: 1

range 0-300
net render: ok

sorry for my bad english
hope that it can help you