Netrender Issue[ needs shared disk for gi files:-]

[Walli]

Hi,

I have a little animation that looks fine when rendered in editor and also in picture viewer.
So I started rendering the scene via netrender and the pictures come out way to dark. Almost looks as if the lightsources are not rendered.

Is there something I have to take care of when rendering via netrender?

best,
Walli
PC, C4D R10.111, Vray 1.03

[RenatoT]

Hello Walli,

can you send me the project ?
Have you encountered this problem before?
Are you rendering with the GI interpolation?

Cheers
Renato

[Walli]

http://www.wallis-eck.de/download/Vray.zip

[zeitgenosse]

same here, netrender ignores lights...thats not good!
but without netrender and with lights: vrayforc4d is great!

zeitgenosse leo

[stefan]

netrender works very good i just finished a HD animation in 1920x1080 format using NET.

make sure your clients see the saved IR +LC map. other wise it renders to dark as they cant read the GI solution. most easiest is to save it on a shared networkdrive. so i save the IR+LC map to Z: drive. on all clients this drive is also called Z:. then it renders fine.

also make sure of course it finds all other paths.

cheers
stefan

[Walli]

I did not use animaton settings as this was just a test to see if it works - so there were no saved GI solutions to find...

[Walli]

Hi, I made some more tests today and the same effect happens on a local machine - always the first picture rendered fine, the following without light.
The strange thing: I tested several times and it happened again and again.

And suddenly it started to work as expected and I don´t know why....

[Domingus]

Same problem here.
We found out that the Net-Render Server does not transmit the IR+LC maps to the clients.
We even tried to trick Net-Render to copy the two files by renaming them into irradiance_map.jpg and LC_map.jpg and put them like a texture into a material, so C4D thinks these files are used in the scene. Did not work.

How can we get the Net-Render Server to copy these two files to the clients like all the other scene files ?

[elipse]

Net render doent' transmit the IR files and LC maps to the clients.

You need to setup a network share that is identical on all clients, then define the path to this in the c4d master file.

It does work - Mine is running as I type this!

I don't think it'd be possible to get net render to transmit these files.

Chris

[stefan]

please as aid always, to render on netrender you must setup a sahred volume for the gi files and ies files if you use one of the methods that use presaved gi files!

then all works fine:-)
cheers
stefan

[zeitgenosse]

...and how do you get it to work on renderfarms?
do they have to create a shared volume for each job?

[stefan]

hi zeitgenosse,

all renderfarm systems have shared volumes/disks, you need that for almost any rendersoftware.

you dont need one for each job, just one place/disk/ server that has the same path from all clients, and has read + write access:-)

this is nothing very special
cheers
stefan

it is also very easy to make. i have a server he it is the "z" drive". this i see from all clients. this works if i start on osx or winows. takes 2 minutes to setup.

[Domingus]

Sorry, this IS something special...

There should be a way to let the server transfer the IR and LC files to the clients.
In our Renderfarm, we dont get a shared drive, the admin refuses to set it up due to security reasons.
So - no Vray Renderfarm for us...

PLEASE find a way to get the files transferred to the clients like any other texture file. Not everyone has his renderfarm in the same building/room !

[stefan]

almost each highend rendersoftware does this, this IS VERY EASY and not special at all.
thats very very basic windows or osx. this takes 30seconds per pc to setup.

already many renderfrarms and many many private person have that setup, not only for vray.
if your renderfarm cant do this you also cannot render in max or maya or any other 3d software also not maxwell, finalrender, fryrender or any of the available;-)

most farms even have thirdparty software like smedge that even allows mixed shared volumes between differerent os like osx and windows. for splitup renderfarms this is standard. by the way 90% of the farms have their renderclients locally as huge data amounts have to be tranfered among the clients, so unless you have a very very fast internetconnection this is not efficient. if you can afford such a connection you might easily afford the VPN connection;-)

cheers
stefan

p,s you shoud know that you easily can setup a secure openVPN connection if you have a renderfarm that is split on different locations, even i have this here, so i can send files from my notebook or at home.

[useruser]

Net render doent' transmit the IR files and LC maps to the clients.

You need to setup a network share that is identical on all clients, then define the path to this in the c4d master file.

It does work - Mine is running as I type this!

I don't think it'd be possible to get net render to transmit these files.

Chris

Hi Chris Please can you tell me were the IR files and LC maps are located
and what i have to do with the "c4d master file"?
a shared networkfolder is now configurated for all clients as device"R"
it is the same folder where i save the whole C4D-Projekt for netrendering.
i am newbie, s o what is the next step to configure everything right?
Thanks a lot in advance!
oli

[podlovics]

Hi Guys, I am having some issues with the Net Renderer. The Server does not send the IES file to to the Clients. When I save the Project to the Server the IES file is there. When I watch the Scene folder in a Client only the c4d file and the texture files get sent there, the IES is missing.
Any solutions?

[elipse]

Oli,


The IR and LC files will be located where you have defined them to be in your GI settings.

The c4d master file is the file you have created on your workstation

For example in my project file, I use the following to save my pre-pass / multi-frame incremental / etc /etc files to ;

g:\vray_gi\IRmaps and g:\vray_gi\lcmaps

These are the directories that all my cached files go to.

On my server I share my vray_gi directory, then on all of my clients I map the vray_gi share as a drive and give the same drive letter as defined in my file (g).

so if I were to open g:\vray_gi\lcmaps in the command line on my client it would display my lcmaps - this way I know all my links are working.

Then when you Net render all of your clients should see the GI files and render away happily.

Hope this helps, give me a shout if you need anymore clarification

DOminugs - looks like you need to presuade the admins to let you have shared drives, like stefan said thisis the majority of render engines worked with pre-cached GI. its so easy to setup!!

[stefan]

as said the ies files and the gi files need to be playced on a server disk or volume that is visible to all clients:-)

juts mount a disk or folder on each client and server with the same path.

cheers
stefan

[podlovics]

Stefan,
I did that. In my c4d file I always loaded the IES file from a folder at my server. Then I save it as a project to my Server, open the c4d file and the path to the IES is not pointing to my server anymore, but showh only the name of the IES file without any path.
The only solution is that I change that filename to relative again and save it again
Tamas

[useruser]

Oli,


The IR and LC files will be located where you have defined them to be in your GI settings.

The c4d master file is the file you have created on your workstation

For example in my project file, I use the following to save my pre-pass / multi-frame incremental / etc /etc files to ;

g:\vray_gi\IRmaps and g:\vray_gi\lcmaps

These are the directories that all my cached files go to.

On my server I share my vray_gi directory, then on all of my clients I map the vray_gi share as a drive and give the same drive letter as defined in my file (g).

so if I were to open g:\vray_gi\lcmaps in the command line on my client it would display my lcmaps - this way I know all my links are working.

Then when you Net render all of your clients should see the GI files and render away happily.

Hope this helps, give me a shout if you need anymore clarification

DOminugs - looks like you need to presuade the admins to let you have shared drives, like stefan said thisis the majority of render engines worked with pre-cached GI. its so easy to setup!!

Hi Chirs,
Thanks a lot!
oli

[johnzapf]

Hey there guys,

any of you tried to render the stepped IR maps on Net Render? Doesn't seem that c4d renders step frames. So if you have a big animation, you have to render your IR map file on one machine and then share the gi files for your render farm. Is there a way around this? I'm cruising the threads and just checking stuff out for this animation I might use vray for as some "other" render engines are proving too flicky.

Nice tutorial though Stark.

That's what this question is in reference to.

Thanks

John

[podlovics]

I am having some problems too: When saving a project with IES lights, the lights are saved with the project on the net server, however they are not exported to the clients (only the c4d file and the textures). Then the clients can't find the path to the IES lights and they are not rendered. What I did was that I saved the IES light on my server machine and defined relative paths pointing to the server with the IES lights. Is works , but not on all machines. I have no idea why. The simple solution would be to export IES lights to the scene folder on the clients, just like it is done with the textures.
The other issue is the Anim Prepass - Anim Render options in the Irradinace Map. I can save the Anim prepass files, but can't read them using the Anim Render. Anyone had any success with it?

[stefan]

hi,
the ies files must have absolute path to the shared disk, same as gi files.
cinema4d cannot spread the ies files. only c4d native files and textures.

in next version we also tries to make handling of ies more simple and clear.
cheers
stefan

[sbecker]

Podlovics,

For the Anim Render pass, set the filepath path the first cached file of the sequence: EX: SceneCache0000. Then delete the 0000. You should now be able to use the precache render files. Also the Render Farm should have no problems finding them.

Hope this helps!

[sbecker]

to make that a little clearer. save to something like z:\irmaps\test\animprepass\cache. When you go to load this make sure this path remains like this. If you select it the path through the finder you will most likely load z:\irmaps\test\animprepass\cache0000. Make sure the frame numbers are not in or you Anim Render will not work. So it would be z:\irmaps\test\animprepass\cache

[podlovics]

Thanks sbecker, it works now.
Back to the IES lights and Net Renderer. What I did I saved a copy of IES files on my c4d server machine (Server) Then I set up my c4d file that way that the IES lights are referenced from a path like this: \\Server\administrator\53628.IES It works most of the times.

[stefan]

for the gi path:
the most easy is to juts copy paste the path from the save to the load dialog, then you have it correct 100%:-)

you must make sure to use absolute path in netrender for ies, please check before rendering. we are working on making this easier with ies.
sadly when you do a save as project the ies at the moment gets changed to relative path by cinema4d. this will be different in next version.

cheers
stefan

[FredSpeaks]

I am on an all mac environment and I have just created a folder on the root drive of each computer to hold the gi solutions and ies files. This seems to work out just fine. Net Clients see it no problem. I just have to manually copy the files to each machine, but that take 5 minutes max.

[podlovics]

I did the same, too on my PC's. C:\IES\(and the IES files here).
I did it on all of my 15 machines, and it works. The only annoying thing is that when I save a project I need to reopen the saved c4d file and change the path of the IES files for each light, eg. C:\IES\57116.IES

[stefan]

we will change the behavior with "save as project" and ies...
cheers
stefan

[FredSpeaks]

Maybe I spoke too soon. It seems that the ies lights didn't render. But none of the net clients gave errors in the client console that they couldn't find the file. They just didn't use the file. All the clients found the GI solution and used it, just not the IES.

I just now re-ran the render using a network drive and found the same thing. The clients are not using the ies lights.

here is the standard cinema render

http://www.atechstudio.com/clients/vray/standard.jpg

here is the net render


http://www.atechstudio.com/clients/vray/Client.jpg

[FredSpeaks]

I solved my problem. It was a units issue. The RenderTitan script fixed the issue.