Large format renderings for print/Arnold netowork rendering with single node

[mmrajchel]

The project.
Currently working on a few pieces for print. Creating them in 3ds Max, rendering with Arnold. Test renders all look great at 1920 x 1080 (roughly). I have all my files set to go when I run into the problem.

The problem.
The final dimensions of what we want the prints to be is, roughly 4 feet wide by 3 feet tall. Shooting for around 175 dpi to start. Trying to render this outright causes, eventually, the system to freeze up, blue screen, or just generally throw an error before it can even get to half way through the render. Even the initial first pass that just blocks in everything before buckts come up is beyond sluggish. The solution that I discovered worked a few months ago, which was to use backburner to do strip rendering (render individual strips of the image and then at the end they are stitched back together into one image file by backburner). When I initially did this about a month ago, it worked out just fine. I got exactly what I needed about 2 hours after I started the render which was a lot better than I thought it would be. Fast forward to today and I've got watermarks. Backburner can not find the license it says. Now, here is the questions.

The questions.
1. Does anyone have a good way of rendering very large images for print via 3ds max Arnold?
2. Every copy of 3ds max comes with a license for Arnold correct? So why does it not recognize the license when I try to do a single note network render when that single node is the PC with the 3ds max license on it?
3. Has Autodesk and Arnold render changed its licensing policy to only be a 30 day trial of some sorts when it comes to the license that is attached to 3ds max. The reason I ask this last question is because recently there was an update to 3ds max and I didn't think anything of it. On my work pc which I use every day, today after all these issues I went into arnold license manager and it said that my 30 day free trial was up, however on my home computer which these days I rarely load up 3ds max, and just updated it today, it says that I have 30 days left on a trial (I own Autodesk licenses for both !).

I apologies if this is not where this question belongs, or if this doesn't quite make sense, but I have look for the past 6 hours for an answer, consulted our IT department and have submitted a ticket to Autodesk (still waiting on that response) and have found no solution. 

[Stephen.Blair]

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@mmrajchel wrote:

The questions.
2. Every copy of 3ds max comes with a license for Arnold correct? So why does it not recognize the license when I try to do a single note network render when that single node is the PC with the 3ds max license on it?
3. Has Autodesk and Arnold render changed its licensing policy to only be a 30 day trial of some sorts when it comes to the license that is attached to 3ds max. The reason I ask this last question is because recently there was an update to 3ds max and I didn't think anything of it. On my work pc which I use every day, today after all these issues I went into arnold license manager and it said that my 30 day free trial was up, however on my home computer which these days I rarely load up 3ds max, and just updated it today, it says that I have 30 days left on a trial (I own Autodesk licenses for both !).

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You don't get an Arnold license with 3ds Max. 

You get the ability to render without a watermark in the 3ds Max user interface.

If you want to do any batch/network rendering, you need to purchase Arnold subscriptions separately.

[mmrajchel]

I understand that is what the documentation states, but why did it work perfectly over a month ago without issue? Is there any sort of documentation you can point me to that explains how one could go about rendering very large format  stills? There must be some way to automate in 3ds max and arnold to render strips and stitch them back together the way I can with backburner. 

Even if there is no remedy, it seems a bit unfair that I can't use network rendering with a single node. I can understand having to pay for additional seats of the render software, but if I can render without a watermark from 3ds max, why should doing it another way be any different.

[Stephen.Blair]

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@mmrajchel wrote:

I understand that is what the documentation states, but why did it work perfectly over a month ago without issue? Is there any sort of documentation you can point me to that explains how one could go about rendering very large format  stills? There must be some way to automate in 3ds max and arnold to render strips and stitch them back together the way I can with backburner. 

Even if there is no remedy, it seems a bit unfair that I can't use network rendering with a single node. I can understand having to pay for additional seats of the render software, but if I can render without a watermark from 3ds max, why should doing it another way be any different.

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I think Deadline can break a frame into parts and automatically put them back together.

If you didn't get a watermark a month ago, then you must have been using a trial license (unless you purchased an Arnold subscription).

Basically, 3ds Max and Maya come with free lookdev with Arnold. If you're using any other supported product (such as Houdini or CINEMA 4D), you'd have to buy an Arnold subscription to remove watermarks in the user interface.

[mmrajchel]

So we have not purchased a license for Arnold and I guess it would make sense that it worked a month ago because I was on a trial, however, I have had 3ds max/Arnold on this machine since February. So unless something has changed recently with how Arnold works in conjunction with 3ds max within the past month or so, I dont see how that could be the case. In theory, if 3ds max gives you a "trial license" for the first month of having 3ds Max installed, I should not have been able to network render the way I did a month ago because that would have been months past the original trial license. This is further confusing because in the advertising material for 3ds max/Arnold is does in fact say "The arnold for 3ds max plug in is provided free of charge with a license when rendering within an interactive 3ds max session. ". It does follow it up by saying that if you do any network rendering or batch rendering that additional licenses would need to be purchased.

Let me ask one additional question and then I will let this go. If I have a render farm setup that is the host computer and 1 additional node (so 2 computers total to do rendering) and I were to purchase an Arnold license for the node (not the host computer), would 1 have a watermark and the other not? effectively forcing me to buy 2 licenses for Arnold?