Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 Hi, I have few question which maybe first one answers all others but i need anyway some advices from you for future setups. Is apprentice version not allowing distributed rendering? I tried to add "-H otherpeecee1,otherpeecee2" in mantra ROP but nothing happens. the only machine that renders is the one with opened scene itself. Could you please give me guidelines for distributed rendering over a network of bunch of machines? which is better when you have couple of available machines (maybe -H is enought?) and which is better when you have a farm (maybe a render menager like many out there even free?) Thanks a lot in advance for any of your answers. I read/search a bit on the forum and found that path must be the same on every machine.. what i dont get is if I need to copy the "database" on every rendering machine.. or if i need to "mount or map" the network drive to my own machine so that the path is the same... I'm used to MentalRay distributed rendering since years.. but its first time I need/try with Mantra and didnt found a lot in the Help. cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward Posted March 6, 2006 Share Posted March 6, 2006 I think it's disabled for Apprentice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 6, 2006 Author Share Posted March 6, 2006 ok. is somewhere any doc on how to setup it for a commercial environment?.. we're going to buy licenses within next weeks and I'd like to be prepared for that setup since I've got both availibity to have spare machines and a complete renderfarm. Thanks in advance. cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 7, 2006 Author Share Posted March 7, 2006 ok... seems i make questions which doesnt makes much sense maybe... but still.. I cant believe nobody here uses a renderfarm to spit out mantra frames... cheers.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted March 7, 2006 Share Posted March 7, 2006 Well we distribute rendering in a different way, rather than using multi-procs on one image we generate ifds and then use a single proc for each ifd. Therefore a multi-proc machine might be rendering two images at once rather than one twice as quick. This is basically because we had so many problems in the past when multi-proc rendering would break. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 7, 2006 Author Share Posted March 7, 2006 Well we distribute rendering in a different way, rather than using multi-procs on one image we generate ifds and then use a single proc for each ifd. Therefore a multi-proc machine might be rendering two images at once rather than one twice as quick. This is basically because we had so many problems in the past when multi-proc rendering would break. 25459[/snapback] nice.. and interesting... so i need to investigate on such ifd files.. how to generate 'em .. and correct if i'm wrong since its first time i'm "carying" about this .. are such ifd.. like .mi files for mentalray? could be a render manager like "royal render" used then with such ifds and mantra via shell? (since royal render supports every command line render engine considering their "product detail") .. then.. how to render such ifd ? thanks sib. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peliosis Posted March 7, 2006 Share Posted March 7, 2006 Well we distribute rendering in a different way, rather than using multi-procs on one image we generate ifds and then use a single proc for each ifd. Therefore a multi-proc machine might be rendering two images at once rather than one twice as quick. This is basically because we had so many problems in the past when multi-proc rendering would break. 25459[/snapback] Are you using windows or linux? In other software (XSI) rendering is much more stable on linux. I sort of count on rendering one image on multiple machines, it could speed up lighting setup and rendering for print. Is it worth it or does it only produce problems? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted March 7, 2006 Share Posted March 7, 2006 Well I'm on windows, I'm sure Linux its more stable but we setup our pipeline a long time ago and now it's kinda set. For doing render tests etc yes we do often use multi procs. On windows you have to watch your path variables are all unc paths like //server/data/...... and there are issues with where otls are and image maps and stuff Ifds are easy to generate just turn on generate script file on your output rop. To render an individual ifd file with mantra you use this commandline mantra < yourifd.ifd try mantra -h for more options For print res stuff we sometimes just chop the image up into chunks and render those bits seperately but that more of a memory management thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deecue Posted March 7, 2006 Share Posted March 7, 2006 are such ifd.. like .mi files for mentalray? don't know about mental ray, but ifd's are the equivalent to ribs for renderman.. A complete description of your scene for that frame so that the renderer can interpret it and spit it back out into an image.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 7, 2006 Author Share Posted March 7, 2006 don't know about mental ray, but ifd's are the equivalent to ribs for renderman.. A complete description of your scene for that frame so that the renderer can interpret it and spit it back out into an image.. 25469[/snapback] ok then... mostly .mi files for mental ray then. thanks for all the answers... i'll start around next month about the real setting for everything ... licenses have to be bought yet ... so i cant make any tests yet ... but I'll keep you updated about Royal Render and Mantra... cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deecue Posted March 8, 2006 Share Posted March 8, 2006 i should probably back step my thought there and note that ribs/ifds don't have to be a complete description.. it could only contain your geometry for example.. it just all depends on how you generate them.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 8, 2006 Author Share Posted March 8, 2006 i should probably back step my thought there and note that ribs/ifds don't have to be a complete description.. it could only contain your geometry for example.. it just all depends on how you generate them.. 25472[/snapback] again same as for .mi files then ... so you mean they could even conatin the textures data?... cause with .mi you can generate pretty big files but with textures included... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted March 8, 2006 Share Posted March 8, 2006 I sort of count on rendering one image on multiple machines, it could speed up lighting setup and rendering for print.Is it worth it or does it only produce problems? 25466[/snapback] Don't forget we have ipr rendering too which speed things up a ton when setting up shaders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 8, 2006 Author Share Posted March 8, 2006 Don't forget we have ipr rendering too which speed things up a ton when setting up shaders. 25480[/snapback] here i must admit.. i pretty always turn it off... OR.. i'm "using" it badly.. cause when doing VOP shaders.. it wont update correctly most of the time and I have to "clear IPR cache" often.. so where am I doing wrong there? (using IPR viewer in my VOP "desktop". cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted March 8, 2006 Share Posted March 8, 2006 I tend to only use it once the shader has been created from the VOP network and all I'm doing is changing values of the shader parameters. You don't really need it just to create the shader in the first place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted March 8, 2006 Author Share Posted March 8, 2006 I agree.. but certain times i need to tricks back the VOP network (I'm experiencing this right now that i'm working on the Fire tests) and its nice to have previews from mantra.. since VOP viewer doenst really gives me the correct feedbacks since my geometry is way different from a sphere or a torus cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renderfox Posted March 9, 2006 Share Posted March 9, 2006 For distributing I use this simple technics yet: >hscript -q YOUR_HIP.hip frange.cmd where frange.cmd is: opparm -d /out/YOUR_RENDER f quit this command returns frame range for selected output for selected hip. Next step is dividing this range by number of render hosts and making the following scripts: renderA.cmd opparm /out/YOUR_RENDER f (fromA toA 1) render -V /out/YOUR_RENDER quit where fromA and toA are subsequent range for host A and finaly: >rexec -host A hscript YOUR_HIP.hip renderA.cmd Mario offer automatization of this process by using SunGridEngine and his own scripts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted July 14, 2006 Author Share Posted July 14, 2006 ....hm .. I'm back to this thread... since time is close for starting the serious job.. am I wrong.. or "generated script file" is disabled in apprentice?.... if this is wrong.. I then didnt found the option that makes it disabled. cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward Posted July 14, 2006 Share Posted July 14, 2006 No, you're not wrong. Generate Script is disabled in Apprentice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted July 14, 2006 Author Share Posted July 14, 2006 oh ok ... then I really dont have idea about generating IFD files Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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