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VRay Distributed Rendering

Introduction

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.

VRay organization

VRay 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. VRay 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.

Installation notes

See the distributed rendering section in the install instructions.

How to test

First start with the testing of the render server:

Start the vrayspawnerXX.exe program. 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 3dsmax stays there alive without closing then you have the Render Server part working.

Now test the render client:

Open your 3dsmax as you normally would.

Open a scene you would like to render (preferably a simple one for this test).

Choose VRay as your current renderer and make sure you have checked Distributed Rendering ON in the VRay 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. Buckets rendered by the client itself will be marked with IP address "0.0.0.0".

If something fails

Practically every action taken by VRay 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.

VRay Distributed rendering settings

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.

Notes

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.

Incremental add to current map and Add to current map modes for the irradiance map are not supported in Distributed rendering mode. In Single frame mode and Bucket mode, the calculation of the irradiance maps is distributed among the render servers to reduce the render time.

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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