Distributed Rendering 2018

[RichJacobUK]

Hi All,

I hope you are all well.

I need some advice regarding Distributed rendering. As I am often called on to produce large, hi quality renders of complex scenes , I have made good use of Mental Ray DBR in Max 2017. The company invested in some very hi-end workstations for this very reason. I am now on the verge of moving to Max 2018 but am very hesitant due to the fact I am not sure I can continue to use DBR. 

I suppose my first question is , how will I perform the task of distributed rendering in 2018 ?

2. Can Backburner utilise several desktops to render one image ?

3. Is it possible using my mental ray install in 2018 ?

4. If Arnold is the way forward, will it allow me to use the processing power of several desktops to render one image ?

Any advice on this would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Have a great Day/Morning/Evening

[StephenMF]

Corona has this. Maybe that would work for you?

https://corona-renderer.com/features/features-full-list

Distributed rendering

• Slaves can join or quit the render session after it has started
• Auto discovery of slaves on local network
• Auto sending of assets to all machines (only if required)
• Pass, Time and Noise Level limits can be used
• Can be enabled / disabled during rendering

Not too expensive.

[sdeters]

The one big difference in the network rendering, will be your costs.  Mental ray they way you have it now, it will not cost you to run network rendering.  Arnold you will now need to buy rendered nodes licenses.  You can check the prices.  But you can do the backburner with processing different scan lines on different machines with back burner. 

[RichJacobUK]

Hi All,

Thankyou for your replies.

@StephenMF

I will bare that in mind. Thankyou.

@sdeters

Regarding your comment "Mental ray they way you have it now, it will not cost you to run network rendering.  "

Does this mean that it is still possible to use MR DBR in 2018 ? 

If so then I will have another question 🙂

At present I can add satellites to the add/edit host list in 2018 , but at render it says it cannot add host , in the render message window.

Thanks in advance.

[sdeters]

Sorry Mental ray is being obsolete, so you may be able to get it for 2018, but you may want to look into this.  this  is on the Nivdia website.  https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/solutions/rendering/product-updates/ 

I have not used Mental Ray I started with Arnold, So I can not answer your question.  Hope someone else can. 

[RichJacobUK]

Thanks again @sdeters

It's becoming obvious now that it's time to move over to Arnold and I would just like some assurance that I will be able to render single images across multiple desktops ( similar to DBR ). So my question .... is it possible ? and if so can anyone point me in the right direction of a tutorial or instructions on how to do this please ?

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards.

[hagen.deloss · Accepted solution]

Hello @RichJacobUK

Great to hear from you on the forums! I wanted to first provide some links and suggestions in regards to a 3Ds Max 2018 Mental Ray Workflow. Here is the plugin download link for Mental Ray.  Though as you discovered, there isn't a way to utilize Distributed Rendering without a network management system, here is a list of recommended ones, I hear great things about Deadline or Teamrender, though the learning curve is steep! 

Honestly, Arnold would also want to leverage a 3rd party network management software of some sort, that function isn't built in currently.

I hope this helps!

Please select the Accept as Solution button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

[RichJacobUK]

Hi @hagen.deloss

Thankyou that was very helpful. and thanks to everyone else who replied to my post. 

Im pretty close to getting a full understanding of how to proceed with the changes in mental ray/ max 2018.  I just need one thing cleared up for me..... I get that 3rd party plugins ( like back burner etc ) can utilise multiple desktops to spread a render job , but so far it seems like everyone is referring to the frames of animations being each rendered on separate computers with the use of Backburner, and this will be very useful for me in some areas of my job. But.. I'm not seeing anyone say that you can use Backburner (for example) , to render a single frame of a large image , (that would take a very long time on one computer) spread over multiple desktops. 

   Like for instance my current setup with Max 2017/ Mental ray. I have my laptop as the master , and at render time it uses mental ray's DBR to utilise two powerful desktops over a network. So its basically using all the cores of 3 machines to complete one large render.  Going forward I need to be able to continue working like that as I have to produce many high quality , large images on a regular basis.  

If Backburner can work this way in 2018/2019 Max, then im a happy man .  So in a very long winded way , that is my question.

Many thanks in advance for all your help.

Kind Regards.

[hagen.deloss · Accepted solution]

Hi @RichJacobUK

From my understanding, if you have  separate license for Vray or Arnold on the other machines, you can use distributed rendering workflow through Vray or Arnold.  Here is some more information on Distributed rendering workflows using Vray.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

Did you ever resolve your question properly?

The way I understood your issue is "can Arnold within Max and having Max (with MaxtoA) installed on all nodes, distribute a single image across those multiple nodes?"

I am currently using Pulze Render Manager and it cannot.

I don't want to waste effort installing Backburner as our Distributed Render manager if it does NOT achieve what I understood as your question.

As what you ask is exactly what we are also trying to achieve.

1 frame image, big resolution, distributed across multiple nodes simultaneously, using Arnold.

I hope to hear from you.

I don't believe the provided "solution" directly resolved your specific issue. 

[CiroCardoso3v]

It is better to open a new thread and share your info there. You are trying to have multiple machines rendering (contributing) the same image?

[StephenMF]

Wrong.
It's better if the solution in the original question is solved - even after a long time and to not create duplicate threads, witch will scatter any solution, and make it harder to find.

[CiroCardoso3v]

Isn't the original question solved?

[Anonymous]

I don't believe so, the OP (in my opinion) has NOT had his question resolved.  I see no answer to his Item 4 (if Arnold can dr a single image).  I read through the entire thread, and others, and see no direct response to his question.  Happy to open a new thread, but that complicates things given the issue is the same.

Cheers.

[Anonymous]

Completely agreed.  And the marked "solution" does not resolve the OP's questions.  Hence I am asking the OP if he received any further useful information.

[Stephen.Blair]

Any render manager that can split a frame into tiles can do it. The render manager has use the Arnold render region settings. 

Depending on what host software you use, you might have to set the render region via the User Options

C:\Users\blairs>%A%\bin\kick -info options | findstr reg
INT region_min_x -2147483648
INT region_min_y -2147483648
INT region_max_x -2147483648
INT region_max_y -2147483648