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VRay for 3ds Max Manual
Distributed Rendering
Distributed rendering is a technique for distributing a single render job
within a single frame across many computers in a network. There are
different approaches of doing this but the main concept is to reduce the
render times by dividing different parts of the rendering pipeline and
giving each participant different parts of the job. The most common way to
do this is to divide the frame to be rendered into small regions(buckets)
and give each machine to render a number of them. Then get the results and
combine them into the final image.
V-Ray supports DR. It divides the frame into regions and spreads them
across the participants in the distributed rendering. This is done
completely through TCP/IP protocol which is the standard protocol of the
Internet and thus the most common protocol that is supported by the
hardware. V-Ray itself does not need additional file or directory sharing
(note that you may actually need some file/directory sharing for the bitmaps
or other additional files used during rendering). The distribution
management is divided into Render Clients and Render Servers.
The render client is the computer that the user is currently using and
from which the rendering is started. It divides the frame into rendering
regions and spreads it across the Render Servers. It distributes data
to the render servers for processing and collects the results.
A render server is a computer that is part of the so-called render farm -
it requests render data from the render client, processes it and sends the
result back.
See the
distributed rendering section in the
install instructions. Note
that if you create a fresh install of 3ds Max on a machine, you will need
run at least one Backburner job with this machine as a server, before you
can use the machine for distributed rendering.
First start with the testing of the render server:
- Start the vrayspawnerXX.exe program from the Start menu (Start
menu > Programs > Chaos Group > V-Ray for 3dsmax > Distributed rendering
> Launch V-Ray DR spawner). It will automatically try to find the
3dsmax.exe file and start it in server mode. You should end up with
3dsmax minimized down in the task bar. It should have the title "vraydummy.max".
If 3ds Max stays there alive without closing then you have the Render
Server part working. If you see the a 3ds Max window flashing on the
taskbar and then disappearing, right-click on the V-Ray DR spawner icon
in the taskbar tray, select exit to close the DR spawner, and try
running a regular Backburner job with this machine as the server. After
that, try to start the V-Ray DR spawner again.
Now test the render client:
- Open your 3ds Max as you normally would.
- Open a scene you would like to render (preferably a simple one for
this test).
- Choose V-Ray as your current renderer and make sure you have checked
Distributed Rendering ON in the V-Ray
System section.
- Press the Settings button in the
Distributed Rendering section.
- Add the machines used for rendering - either with their IP address
or their network name and close the dialog.
- Render the scene as you normally would. You should see the buckets
rendered by the different servers.
Practically every action taken by V-Ray DR is logged. You can find all
the log files in the C:\ directory and find out what has failed. If you do
not understand the problem you can compress and send the files to us to
analyze them and eventually try to help -
vray@chaosgroup.com
If any of the servers fails, you should get a notification and the render
client will try to reassign the buckets to another server.
 The
Distributed rendeing settings dialog is accessible from the
System rollout of the renderer
settings.
Add server - this button allows you to
manually add a server by entering its IP address or network name.
Remove server - this button deletes the
currently selected server(s) from the list.
Resolve servers - this button resolves the IP
addresses of all servers.
Restart slaves on render end - enabling
this option will cause the 3ds Max copy on the render slaves to be restarted
once a DR rendering is finished. This may help to make distributed rendering
more stable.
- Every render server must have all the plugins and texture maps in their
proper directories loaded so that the scene you are sending will not cause
them to abort. For example having a PHOENIX plugin used in the scene will
cause a server failure in any of the servers that do not have the PHOENIX
plugin installed. If you have mapped your object with a file named
JUNGLEMAP.JPG and you do not have that map in the BITMAPS directories of the
render server installation - you will get bucket rendered at that machine as
if the map was turned off, unless you also turned on the
Check for missing files option in the V-Ray
System rollout, in which case
the render server will refuse to render the scene.
- When you cancel a DR rendering, it may take some time for the render
servers to finish working and they may not be immediately available for
another render.
- Default lights are not supported in DR mode and will not render. If you
need any lighting in the scene, you should add it explicitly.
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