Nube ? Renderfarm

V-Ray V-Ray for Maya Issues
1

So… When I try to render on my supermicro 5037m-h12trf 12 blade render farm. With various shaders and 500mb of textures it takes a hour for all nodes to receive the data. Each node has 2 x rj45 1gb/sec and the workstation has 2x rj45 1gb/sec the switch is Cisco 48x rj45 1gb/sec.

You would presume a bottleneck while 12 nodes all try to access the same subfolder at once, but the first node only takes a few minutes to start, and the last node a hour.

But it’s only 500mb maybe 10 files. It should transfer all that at 7 seconds per node in theory, 2 Lines both doing 1g a second each even with a bottle neck.

Any suggestions?

2

What kind of server are they reading the info from? It sounds like its most likely the issue with the network. One way you can double check this is if you copy a large file to all the nodes at once. I usually have a command line script that copies a 20 GB file to all nodes at once and monitor the network load. 12 machines accessing a server at 1 Gig, and I suppose your server can only support 2 Gig with two lanes at best, meaning 12 machines is 1200 Mb /s for 200 Mb/s capability. It maybe that your server is serving the files in a queue so first machine gets priority, then second then so on if it thinks its encountered too many connections and can’t allocate that data at once. It also is worse for many smaller files then one a single large file. For example you can even check that, if you copy one large file over you will get 100 Mb/s speed. But if you copy 100 files that are 5 mb each or whatever, you will only get 50 Mb/s or something similar. Compound that into hundreds of files over dozens of machines you will get a slowdown for sure since the server is spending a lot of time just managing the file packets.

3

I think it is my cables… I got a copy of ‘lan speed test lite’ and it said I am only getting 100mb/sec. Also my second rj45 is just sitting there retarded not helping.

So I am ordering new cables. I was thinking of upgrading to 10 gigabit for like $5,000.- but now I wonder if I will need it since I am not using 1 gigabit yet.

I just wondered if there was a software lag in Vray slave since it counts down the % of scene file and then Ray packets and stuff; before it starts with texture files. I will assume no? Since it starts the gi pass and buckets while the slave window still claims to be downloading textures.

4

you can start task manager and in networking it will show what speed you are getting on your machine. 100 mb/sec is 1 gig tho. You have to see the language here, 100 Mb/sec = 1 Gigabit network speed. However if in task manager it says 100 Mbits, then you are getting 10 megabytes per second.

5

Hmm… The plot thickens, blade server is getting speeds of 700mb-900mb up and down with itself.
must be the workstation cable to networked drive.
Is ok, drive is full. I just debugged my new fileshare server 120tb will make sure to get gigabit cables instead of using the crap that came with my cable box.
so you don’t know how the slave process handles the texture files?

I just thought it was weird. The window claiming it was still downloading files an hour later. while the render was clearly working

6

Success!
yea it was the cable. speed test 700-900mb to networked drive. Still have to test distributed render. Maybe a day I start before noon. Since it takes a bit to debug a scene and network.

7

WTF that is quite odd. Sounds like some kind of java exploit? it should not be using any network at all.

8

It’s a realtime screencast. Well 12 of them, it sounds about right 3 mb/sec

9

Sounds like you had some fun. What kind of network switch do you have? It could be that the switch is to blame also. You really have to pay attention to the switch options when they claim to have 1 Gig speeds, it should be able to support 1 Gig per port and not a total (stuff like that)

10

It’s a Cisco 2300 series. I tested it. 900mb/sec not quite a gig but a far cry from a meg

11

so when you got a 900 mb/s which test was it that did it? was it on one machine reading from your server?

12

It was a program called: lan speed test lite

It showed like 500 write, 7-900 read depending on the machine, blade to blade, blade to server, server to blade. All about the same.

I saw ltt YouTube tested this: mickro tik switches

Which offers a 24x 10gigabit switch for $500.- us

But as I said, when uploading textures for real I barely hit 7mb.

The benefit would be writing the near 4gb .exr in a animation after the render. But my server crashed so I didn’t get a chance to test it yesterday

13

I had some extra time the other day so i took a look at the new trial for Next, as i am still using 3.6vray.

and my network kept dumping nodes because of ram issues, it said it was trying to use 300 gigs of ram and then crash, but the nodes that did render were strangely using No ram, none at all. other observations were that when using a GI from file it would dump the light and only render the GI. it kept complaining about adaptive lighting being incompatible with GI or single lights. and i checked out the ‘render selected’ in RT mode, again i was disappointed that when it did isolate a polygon it did not render reflections or refraction’s of the surrounding polygons. which makes it no different than Maya’s own isolate selected polygon. i thought i saw a isolate material function in the commercial but i couldn’t find it in the new UI. i imagine it would also not render reflections or refraction’s. making it fairly useless when debugging a material.

i am skeptical about spending $4200.- to upgrade my network when after 18 months update 1.1 is still showing many of the problems i observed in next beta. making me wonder weather it was the solution for me. as i work mainly in science fiction, my current scene has 7,900 lites with a projected 12,000 at finish. i paid $1,200 to upgrade to 3.6 because i wanted to see what was under the hood with probabilistic lighting… and of 2 yrs now i have still not tested it (adaptive lighting) because of network problems.

some of the problems i have with 3.6 is that the security of my wibu keeps locking me out. about 1/3 times it crashes because of security (which is written into the foundation of the software) and every 3 months it prompts me to pay chaos group money for an upgrade, and crashes.

i never had these problems with 3.0 which did not have this new security written into the binary code. i could just work all day long. :)) love the software keep it up

14

Do all of these problems appear with a single scene or with all scenes? Also, I couldn’t understand if the issue happens with V-Ray 3 or V-Ray Next? Additionally- how much RAM does the scene consume locally?

I am skeptical about spending $4200.- to upgrade my network when after 18 months update 1.1 is still showing many of the problems I observed in next beta. making me wonder whether it was the solution for me. as I work mainly in science fiction, my current scene has 7,900 lites with a projected 12,000 at finish. I paid $1,200 to upgrade to 3.6 because I wanted to see what was under the hood with probabilistic lighting… and of 2 yrs now i have still not tested it (adaptive lighting) because of network problems.

If you want to troubleshoot this you can send us and example scene at support@chaosgroup.com and describe the problems which you experience and what should be achieved, maybe there are optimizations that can be made.

some of the problems I have with 3.6 is that the security of my wibu keeps locking me out. about 1/3 times it crashes because of security (which is written into the foundation of the software) and every 3 months it prompts me to pay chaos group money for an upgrade, and crashes.

I never had these problems with 3.0 which did not have this new security written into the binary code. I could just work all day long. :))

I cannot understand this, unfortunately. Is it possible to e-mail us at support@chaosgroup.com with some screenshots? If you don’t want to use a dongle - you can transfer your licenses to your Chaos account and obtain them over the internet - Chaos Licensing

15

i just didn’t like the architecture of the new software in vray next, were it was over complicated.

the security was so complex that it was becoming a hindrance to the customer. as opposed to 3.0 where you just authorized your software and it work every time after. since the security was a separate software.
as opposed to Next and 3.6 where the security was tangled throughout the software and randomly just shut it off when it got confused. or when the salesman wanted some more money. i understand that you need to protect yourself from shoplifting, but most people only make a couple grand a month, and 1-$5,000 for software is kinda steep. not to mention if i was earning money with it; it would pay for itself, but after 18 months i am still at zero revenue fighting with the security to work the first time every time. ouch’ke’bobs! my own opinion is that shoplifters of this kind generally go legit and end up buying it anyway. like i did, shoplift in college and buy when i got a job.since cg is kinda obscure less than 300 pro in the world 5,000 semi pro. there is not really a big market outside the big three: magazines, tv, movies. but whatever…

i just thought the ram issue was kinda weird. i have 8gb installed on every node which has been ok… to run most renders, since it is about what a laptop had. but as my scene is becoming more complex and i am starting newer operations like baking, and complex GI. i have upgraded/ing (when the mail gets here) to 32g/node since that is about what my workstation seems to run 20-30gb when using baking or GI.

(Next) with my main scene a bazillion polygons and 8,000 rect lites it crashed about 30% in. and i made a test scene (since the big scene took 1hr to load 45min to parse) with a plane and 3 semi reflective balls one fully reflective and a checkerboard floor. i am at the cafe just now but i can upload a pic of the simple scene later. that’s when i noticed the ram issue. i mean when it is rendering even the scene should use at least a 1gig to load.

i haven’t really used my new vray3.6, and the beta of next was neat but i couldn’t do a test with the beta (only 4 nodes) of 12. so i have been using 3.0 or 3.6 to do nightlys to show my progress modeling this last summer (no textures/shaders GI) not exactly really load bearing i usually just use the quad core in the lappy.

i am building my fileshare server right now and then when i can transfer my projects folder (3tb textures and proxies) then i am thinking upgrade to win10 enterprise total rebuild; once i back up the data. maybe i can authorize that workstation as the license server no dongle when i do the drivers. as a rule i don’t like to connect my network computers to the internet if i don’t have too. $100k and all…
Studio up,prop set by duhUhHuh on DeviantArt (fileshare pic, youtube following shortly)

16

i have a feeling my In law is trolling me.
trying to make an issue of copyrights… this would be the third time i have caught him making something of nothing.

and i have addressed this issue in other threads. that when i was in college learning: rendering (with a ripped version of 3.0 a classmate gave me) studying shaders, textures, lighting, gi, reflection, refraction. and how to composite all these elements together. all of about 2 years to learn the GUI of vray. i had no issues at all with the crack version.

and when i finally paid off my college debt and the first thing i bought workstation 3.6 for $1200.- (new GUI, all setting changed, new features)

because they have used a windows paranoia based security system that fairly makes you log into the website and use the license remotely, and is woven into the base of the software striped over the entire program; that it does in fact not work now that i am paying for it. and with the expansion that i am looking at $4,200.- more for render nodes, I am a little skeptical about trust. when the program crashes, because it is trying to snoop and can’t connect to the internet, or get updates and can’t log in to the internet, or do anything on the internet and then crash because it can’t.

i have about 3 laptop stations for various functions color, lighting, compositing, music and so on. on different desks and they are all networked into the license server. so in theory i should be able to jump from one to the other and render so long as i am using the appropriate number of nodes, and not going over my limit. in theory.

as an artist i put love in all my art, which is a state of mind. bad moods make bad art. and i won’t waste my time if i am not feeling love in my heart.so… when i spend 2 hours modeling, or lighting, or shading. and then i go to do a quick test render and my license app crashes and locks me out. doubly so if the scene takes an hour to write and a hour to parse. and then if i have to repeat the failure 2, or even 3 times. move the whole project to the workstation with the dongle and license and have it fail again… well it goes without saying that the mood is gone and i am ready to throw laptops across the room instead of feel love.

and instead of getting an 8 hours day in, i get 2 hours before lunch 2 hours getting frustrated and quit after lunch because my mood is gone and take 2 days to meditate.

not a legal thing, not a money thing, a state of mind thing. i hope this helps you in the engineering development process of making vray better. :slight_smile: