Render methods and setting - distributed rendering - vray

monkers

Hi Guys,

For a while now I have been trying to figure the best settings for distributed rendering.

I have no problem setting up all the hardware. I have several i7 4930Ks at my disposal all hooked up on GB switch. I have very little knowledge of the different rendering methods something i need to catch up on. Basically I have been using the vray presets and tweaking them to my needs. The problem is I don't seem to be getting much of a speed increase using DR the actual render passes are over relatively quick. sketchup tends to be a bottle neck as it maxes out RAM very quick so I have tried just using DR which takes longer.

so far my optimal settings have been set dynamic memory limit to 3700 to avoid SU crash (doesnt always seem to work..) Then use DR spawner on all other PCs plus on the local machine.

Can anyone point to some documentation that goes through this in detail? There heaps of info on how to set up DR but I cant find anything on how to use it properly. Is there methods for port forwarding, syncing job files rather than mapping them? Using different render engines? ect.. even more presets available to download?

Thanks
M

rspierenburg

I'm not sure I understand. If you are using DR it should definitely be quick on the final pass. I'm not sure if the initial passes use DR yet or not. But for the final pass, for instance if your main computer uses 8 cores and you have another computer setup for DR that has 8 cores then in theory the final render pass should be half the time (I say in theory because no 2 computers are ever exactly the same).

Rob

valerostudio

Are you using 2.0?

I see a huge boost in rendering times even with just 2-3 computer slaves. There really isnt a whole lot to setup. Have the slaves on and running the spawner. Make sure all of your licensing is setup correctly, click render. Assets are transferred quickly and I see a boost in both my LC pass and IR passes. If it's working, you will see more render buckets at final pass time. If your machine is running low on RAM, just open the 64 bit spawner on your machine and check "Dont Use Local Machine" and just make sure localhost is checked on in your DR setup. With this method, you will not see you LC pass, but it is essentially 64 bit rendering on your local machine because you are no loner confined by SU's 32 bit environment.

Now this is all assuming you are on 2.0, if not, then DR is pretty busted and I wouldn't recommend it.

For more info on DR, see the manual
http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/distributed_rendering.htm