danb4026

I have a single desktop machine used for both modellinng and rendering. It really is a problem when I have a high res render going but still have work to do.

I had never used Vray DR before, so I decided to give it a try on my home network by adding my laptop to the mix. So I added my laptops IP address to the Vray License server so that it could be included to the render job.

The laptop is nothing special:

Vista 64 to match desktop
AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology ML 40
2 GB Ram
ATI Mobility RADEON Xpress 200 Series.

I thought that simply adding an additional processor to the mix thru distributed rendering would speed the render up a bit. NOT the case.
I found all test renders to take a tad bit longer than without DR on.

Why would this be the case? Is the addition of an additional but "lesser" processor a hinderance rather than a help?

Perhaps I am just doing the whole process wrong:
1) Lauch Vry Spawner on laptop
2) Open scenen on main computer and render with DR checked.

Seems simple enough. Any help?

1 more thing.....If you were to add 2,3,4,5 etc. inexpensive desktops to the mix to be used in DR, wouldnt that be the same thing as building your own render farm? Or is it not that simple?

crazy homeless guy

Watch the V-Ray message dialog. It will tell you if your computer successfully connects to the laptop, and it will tell you when information is being sent to the other computer. If the other computer is not responding, it will tell you that also.

You should monitor it visibly. The buckets have names on them that correspond to what computer they belong to. If your laptop successfully connects, you will see buckets that correspond to it. Don't worry if the buckets don't pop up right away, depending on the size of the scene, it may take awhile to transfer the information.

Which leads into two more things. If you see your bucket(s) for the laptop, and they never get past the first one, your laptop might be to weak to be of use. Also remember, the scene is being transfered to that computer, which is not instantaneous. It may take a few minutes depending on the file sizes.

If your scene is simple, it may take longer with distributed render because there is additional time for identifying computers, and transferring files. If your scene is complex, it may take longer because your desktop may be able to compute the entire scene, and render it out before you laptop can finish one bucket.

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travis schmiesing

danb4026

Ok...looked at log and error messages like you said.

A few things pop up:

1) Could not connect to host "ip address": No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.
2) Render Host MachV (machine name) is not responding.
3) Render Host Laptop is not responding.

Its still rendering though.

My firewalls are off...so thats not the problem.

crazy homeless guy

But only your host machine is doing the rendering, the laptop is not helping at all. The extra time you are experiencing is the time it is spending trying to connect to the laptop, and then not being able to.

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travis schmiesing

danb4026

True, but I can not figure out why it isnt connecting to the laptop. I even went into network render and openend the manager on the host machine and the servers on both. They connected and registered fine. So they are communicating.

I don't know why I am getting that error messgage in Vray regarding not being able to access the laptop.

RobNJ73

Something similar came up at work last week (at least, it sounds similar), and what wound up working was making sure that the User accounts were set with administrator privledges.

Just a thought... whenever I come up against a stumper like this, it always seems to be something minor and only peripherally related to what I'm trying to do.

danb4026

They are both set up as Administrators. So thats not it.

Eric Sosa

hey Daniel,

my own experience is that: you need to have all pc's connected to render one single frame using the 100% CPU'S FOR EACH MACHINE, otherwise it not recomended to use the DR, as said before, it takes longer to render because it takes time to identify each machine and they use only about 23% of it's CPU.

here is the procedure:

1. start u'r own spawner and make shure it's running
2. make shure the other pc's have the spawner installed and running too.
3. open max and go to your script window (upper pink box at the bottom left of your max window) and type the script to make all pc's work with it's 100% CPU (don't have the script here unfortunatelly, but I'll give it to you tomorroy when at the office) and PRESS "ENTER" ONLY IN THE NUMBERS KEYBOARD SECTION.
4. go to your vray setup, find the system control, check the distributed rendering box, open it and check that all pc's IP are identified.
5. press "RENDER", go to your slaves machines joblist and make shure their CPU is running above 26%, eventually the will launch their CPU to 100%, mainly when the "rendering" action takes place.

If succeded, you can see the buckets with the pc's IP on at the rendering window.

hope someonelse has the script for you, before me

important; the pc with the highest configuration will take the biggest part of the buckets amount per frame (render)

not a good idea to use several slaves computers if some of them are less then 50% of the main computer, again, it will delay the render more then speeding it up because of trying to identify all pc's at the begginning and at the end of the procces.

don't remember what else atm....I don't have max open

we have 6 x quad cores working together all the time with DR, it's great when it works, but sometimes DR is a pain in the b_t

danb4026

Eric, thanks for all that information. I am not sure that I fully understand about how to get all the pc's to run at 100%, but I will give it a shot.

I will wait to get that script you are talking about.

Do you favor running "net render" using backburner instead? Vray DR seems much simpler to use.

Eric Sosa

humm, don't realy understand what you want DR to do for you.
DR = several computers connected on a local network to render one single frame.

if you do not get the 100% of the CPU of each machine, what is the point of having them to run together?, then, simply make each machine render one frame on it's own.

lets put it this way: one "dual core" pc can render a frame in 60.0 min on it's own, 2 x dual core pc's, working with DR, can render the same frame in 30.0 min, 10 x dual core pc's, working with DR, can render the frame in 6.00 min!!...this is the advantage of rendering with DR

DR gives you the chance to render one single frame FASTER by using several computers networking.

back to topic;

script: renderers.current.system_numThreads=4

this script is for quad cores machines, therefore the nr. 4 at the end. dual cores would use nr. 2 fo example. about your computers specifications.....dunno if you can us this script with a nr. 1 at the end or you simply need other specific script. more advanced members may help here

good luck daniel , you'll be very happy of you make it work this way.

greets Eric