Hi,
(is there any official thread to post and read about Phoenix for Maya ?)
A very fast and succesfull instal, plug-in loaded in 2 seconds, first flames fired after 45 seconds
Question about distrib. rendering, I’ve tried to to do some DR with a Phoenix sim. but with no succes.
(Phoenix 's been installed on slaves machine, everything rebooted), slaves seem to be lost : the master computer made almost all job and of course slaves produced black buckets.
So, is D.R. yet implemented ? did I miss something ?
Except this “little” and logical concern from the prod. director I am, Phoenix seems to be a great simulation engine, the shading in the viewport is really amazing !! The settings far more obvious than Maya fluids.
Great work !
Apart of this, the DR should be no problem, if all slaves can access the Phoenix cache files. I.e. currently, these are not distributed automatically. Also, for the feature Maya version we are considering to distribute the Phoenix for V-Ray plugin with V-Ray for Maya. So you will not need to install PhoenixFD to the slave machines just for rendering.
Hi,
yes ! I didn’t pay attention for the cache I think it was local on the master so the slaves didn’t seen it !!! I’ll try to set the cache on the shared volume for the render farm,
Except this I’ve been playing for 5 hours this night and no crash during all this time (impressive) I’ll try an animation tonight .
I’ve just checked the scene and the cache is on the shared volumes so in theory all slaves could see it (and yes it’s a flame).
(all slaves crashed on this try)
I’ve tried too to launch an anim render without the render farm and I’ve got his :
Okay, my mistake, I thought the farm has been updated (as it should has been…) so I did make the update, no more xy error, but no more smoke either … I’ve tried with slave with the last n.b. of Phoenix and slave without Phoenix installed : same result, slaves can’t render the scene (at all).
"Failed to create object of type “PhoenixFDSimVol”
"Failed to create object of type “PhoenixFDSim”
"Failed to create object of type “PhoenixFDCache”
The error means that the Phoenix plugin for VRay is not loaded properly. Make sure that vray_phoenix.dll is in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2012\vray\vrayplugins. It can be some kind of installation issue.
Also, you can even skip the installation for the slaves and copy just vray_phoenix.dll. The other files are not needed for rendering.
It works !!!
I’ve tried yo reduce the multiplicity of problems with a test with only two PC,
so : I have to set up the paths for the cache manualy, I’m not sure that our system like names with"@" since I’ve saved the cache at the same place but with a simpler name.
Like this I’ve made it works BUT not at each render, I’ve noticed that there is no more problem when I make a prepass for the GI without D.R., then render from the saved GI with the slaves.
I’ll try to render a anim with the 1O nodes in the evening …
Hm, @ seems like a valid symbol for file names. Or this is some kind of network limitation… In any case, if this symbol is a problem, I’ll change it to something else.
In fact I found that everything is far greater than the Maya fluid system except for the cache, I 've tried to play a 4 hours simulation yesterday but the play button seems to reset if not used carrefully , so in place of playing … Phoenix started to cache again :(. I think that it should create a new cache if only asked for and not because you stopped the simulation instead of pausing it, but it’s probably an habit to get into …
The caching system in Phoenix is quite different than the one in Maya (and much easier…). You always create a cache. That’s why you can always view the result, even while simulating. To play the animation, you need to start the Maya playback. If you stop the simulation, it can be continued with the restore button in the AE. But you need to have velocity channel. It’s off by default to make the cache smaller. But you also have a backup feauture that will save the velocity channel for you automatically on some time interval. So you can restore the simulation from some previous frame (not the exact place you want), but you will not need to start all over again. Also, whatever happens, you will still have the old cache (if you didn’t delete it explicitly)
What happens in the following case ?
An artist has played a simulation, he is happy with it, so he launches a render on the farm.
Immediately he resumes his work, improving his maya scene, playing the scene.
Will the cache be automatically changed on the shared disk, breaking the animation that is currently rendered ?
