iaga

Hi People,

I was wondering as we were looking into setting up a render farm at work... we work with VIZ 2008, VRAY 1.5 SP2 - so the question is I guess, do we need to setup Backburner with VRAY for the network render or can VRAY on it's own be used to setup the network render.

I have never set this up before, so all help shall be much appreciated.

Hobo Monstrocity

Iaga, you can do it both ways. Vray 1.5 works fine installed on a PC running Backerburner server. You need to set up the license on the rendering PCs to look for the Vray Dongle on whatever PC you have it installed on, otherwise Vray won't allow the rendering to continue.

Alternativly, you can use the Vray Distributed Rendering. DR is extreemly annoying to set up the first time, but once you get it going I have noticed a small increase in performance over backburner. There are disadvantages to DR. One being that you can't continue to work on your PC while Vray is rendering (COFFEE/SMOKING BREAK!!!! - delete as appropriate), and also DR is a bit unreliable. For example, I have about 10 PCs setup to use it and even though all of them are using the same network paths for materials, almost always, one or more of the PCs will not load the materials. annoying.

anyways, I use both methods. Depending on the situation, but 90% of my rendering is done through Backburner.

Setting up Vray to do Distributed Rendering is a bit tricvky, especially since the method documented in the Vray help files is incorrect. I recommend Googling it.

iaga

Thanks for that Conor.

For me it would be a COFFEE BREAK. So, if it's easier to setup backburner, I'm definitely going for that (plus some of the IT guys here don't have a clue as ours is a large organisation with a very small team i.e. 2 people as visualisers).

Right my next question... Would I need to setup backburner first and then use the Vray Render> system>distributed rendering dialog box to configure the network render OR does backburner have it's own set of options?

Sorry to sound like such a newbee - cos I AM!

RobNJ73

Make sure that you have the server application running on all of the networked PCs that you want to take part in the DR through backburner. Run the manager app on one of the PCs (you can run the monitor optionally, but don't have to). In the file, enable "Net Render" in the common tab, and when you click "render" it will open up a backburner dialogue.

In this window (don't have it open in front of me, so I might be misnaming some of the buttons here, sorry), you'll want to click "Connect" and "Submit" to send the render to the networked PCs.

That's about it in a nutshell (and off the top of my head)... anyone feel free to correct me if I've mislead Imran anywhere...

iaga

Thanks Robert.

By the server application do you mean program files>autodesk>backburner>server?

RobNJ73

Yep. that's it exactly. You can find the manager (and optionally the monitor) in the same location.

iaga

...and as I'm using VRAY the VRAY Spawner needs to be switched on too? or do the nodes just need to recognise which machine the dongle's located?

Thaks for all you help btw.

RobNJ73

The VRay spawner is used with VRay DR, which is independent of Backburner. If you're using backburner, I don't believe you need to run the VRay DR spawner. Backburner should just recognize that VRay is installed on the slave machines and use it to render.

Mind you, I could be wrong on this point though... I haven't used backburner at my current job (I have in the past though), just VRay's DR. When I did use backburner, we weren't using VRay for renderings, so I'm not completely positive about their interoperability.

Hobo Monstrocity

If you are not rendering with DR, then you don't need vrayspawner running, even if you are doing a vray render.

iaga

Thank you Guy's!

Will have to test as soon as all the equipment arrives, we're going to have our own little network with a separate server, with a separate internet pipe to rest of the building. Plus my 3DS Design to arrive in the next few days. Will let you know how I get on.