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.
Render Clients
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.
Render Servers
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.
For installation details check the PDF installation guide here.
To use the distributed rendering feature you need to have V-Ray for Maya installed on the Render Client and V-Ray Stand Alone running in server mode on the Render Servers. See the table below for information how to start the V-Ray Stand Alone on the different operating systems:
How to start the render server Windows Start Menu > All Programs > Chaos Group > V-Ray for Maya > Launch V-Ray render slave Linux /usr/autodesk/mayaNNNN/vray/bin/vrayslave Mac OS X /applications/autodesk/mayaNNNN/Maya.app/Contents/vray/bin/vrayslave
The Distributed rendeing settings dialog is accessible from the System rollout of the renderer settings.
- this button allows you to manually add a server by entering its IP address or network name.
- this button deletes the currently selected server(s) from the list.
- toggles the state of the selected server(s) between enabled and disabled
1 Set-up the Render Servers. You can do that in two different ways.
1.1 Start the render servers as specified in the Table here.
1.2 Start the V-Ray Stand Alone and enter the "vray -server" command in the command promt
2. Set-up the Render Client. In the Maya interface, bring forth the Render Settings dialogue and in the Settings tab under the System roll out click on the Settings button in the Distributed Rendering group. Add all the Render Servers by inputing their IP's in the Add Server name or IP field and click on the button. You can include or exclude the servers in the list in the current rendering by selecting them from the list and toggling the button.
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.