Inventor Rendering On Second Remote Network Computer Instead Of Laptop

[jfjoa]

I do all my inventor work on my laptop. But from time to time, I have a need to render in Studio and my laptop is under powered for the job. I have access to a Power System through our network  (i.e. 100 Core, 256 GB Ram) which would do the jobs that I usually need rendered. 

What software/licence would I need on the Power PC to be able to submit rendering jobs from my laptop? Is there such a infrastructure available to install on the rendering PC? Would I need a 3rd party package?

kelly.young has edited your subject line for clarity: Rending on second computer

[mslosar]

In the case of Inventor Studio, i'm not sure how it deals with rendering. My guess is it'd need a license to do so - a full inventor license. I know it has Mental Ray built into it, but i'm not sure if it has the network capability or not.

In the case of 3ds max, which uses Mental Ray (among other engines), a network rendering seat (1000 actually) are permittable under a single seat license. You just have to install the software on the machine and configure backburner. I'd love to see MR render on a 100 cpu system 🙂 should do 100 buckets simultaneously 🙂

[Mark.Lancaster]

@jfjoa

Rendering in Inventor studio needs a license for Inventor.  However if this machine is actually a server, you are not allowed to install Inventor on a server OS unless it Citrix based and you have a network license.

[dgorsman]

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@mslosar wrote:

In the case of Inventor Studio, i'm not sure how it deals with rendering. My guess is it'd need a license to do so - a full inventor license. I know it has Mental Ray built into it, but i'm not sure if it has the network capability or not.

In the case of 3ds max, which uses Mental Ray (among other engines), a network rendering seat (1000 actually) are permittable under a single seat license. You just have to install the software on the machine and configure backburner. I'd love to see MR render on a 100 cpu system 🙂 should do 100 buckets simultaneously 🙂

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Not quite.  MentalRay has been discontinued by NVidia.  3DSMAX now does NOT come with MR, it comes with Arnold.  Unlike the old 3DSMAX license where you had several additional MR licenses (5, I think the number was) per seat to run on a server/distributed system you only get one in-process Arnold license per 3DSMAX seat.  Using Arnold headless in a server/distributed system requires a separate purchase of dedicated licenses.

[jfjoa]

Thanks for the information.  To, summarize, to use Studio on a second computer used just to render, I need to have a second full  licence of Inventor and the system cannot be a server. 

So how does 3DSMax work with Inventor? Does 3DSMax open Inventor files directly or do you export them?  Does it retain  constraints?  Can you drive constraints for movement or is it done like a NURBS program?

Just out of curiosity, how do most people handle rendering Inventor based models? I use inventor for protoyping and 3D printing, but there are times when a rendered video showing the action or proposed design is very handy in selling a concept. Do most people just do all of the Inventor work on a powerful enough machine to handle rendering so there is no need to move to a different machine for rendering?

I have had difficulty finding any information on rendering outside of the use of one primary machine.

[Neil_Cross]

Inventor can't outsource/offload its rendering to a second machine, that's not possible no matter how many licenses you have.  To answer the question as to what most people do, that's a point of contention at the moment as the options aren't great.

There are a few options but none of them are great or cheap.

1.  Export your Inventor design into Fusion 360 and use the cloud rendering service, this can't use your networked power PC.

2. Just install Inventor (you'd need to buy a second license) onto the Power PC and pack 'n' go your design over to that when you need to render... however Inventor Studio won't be much better until you actually begin to compute the render... setting up the scene and such will be almost as clunky as it is on the laptop.

3. Autodesk VRED has a network rendering cluster mode which works really well, you can import the native Inventor model into VRED and connect the power PC as a cluster node... all rendering will be displayed on the laptop but computed on the power PC.  VRED is very expensive though and has a learning curve, doesn't support Inventor constraints etc

Or there's 3rd party options like Keyshot.  But Inventor won't utilise your power PC unless you port the files over to it.

[kelly.young]

Hello @jfjoa I see that you are visiting as a new member to the Inventor Forum.
Welcome to the Autodesk Community!

Depending on what your situation is, could you install your Inventor onto the powerful work PC with your license and then utilize Remote Desktop Connection to access it?

That way you would get the power of the desktop machine through your laptop. Once you start the render you can sever the connection and it will render "remotely" on the PC. Once you log back on the render would be done and saved, if you check that option.

That might be the easiest, save you headaches, and allow you to have a faster Inventor on your laptop, really depends on your Internet availability and connection speed. 

Hope that helps!

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

[dgorsman]

3DSMAX has gotten a lot better at bringing in content from other applications.

Paging the "Friday pictures" champion @-niels- ... would mind chiming in here?

[-niels-]

@dgorsman, i don't mind, but not sure what to chime here... as i mainly render stills and have little to no experience with network rendering.

@jfjoa, I think most has been answered, 3DS Max can import Inventor models quite well but to my knowledge constraints and motion are lost and need to be created in Max itself.

As i don't really do animation / rigging i can't really comment on how complex it really is, but what i've done myself i can only assume that it'll take a good amount of time to set up.

(especially if you first have to learn the program)

As for your original question of using your network power house to render, @kelly.young's remote access method seems viable but you'll be working on the network pc instead of your laptop.

If you're the only one needing access to it, then that might work.

With 3DS Max, you can use Backburner for network rendering though i'm unsure how it works with the Arnold renderer. (see the statement about licenses by @dgorsman)

There are other render engine options in 3DS Max (ART & Scanline) that i think work without such a need.

Added bonus of using backburner is that you can distribute the render job on more pc's, which will reduce the total render time even more then only using the powerhouse pc.

If you are really interested in learning and using 3DS Max for your rendering i suggest you ask your question on the Max forum as well, so the experts and staff there can give you more accurate information.

[mslosar]

The animation aspects of max vs inventor are different, likely to point the didn't bother exporting the animation.

If you have max, you can directly open an IPT or IAM. Has always given me an excellent model inside of max. Max has far superior rendering, lighting, and animation abilities. There's also an export workflow option inside of Inventor to send it to max. Not sure what all that sends out as i've always imported into max directly. It's much easier for me to animate, etc, inside of max having worked in that prior to Inventor.

We're a couple years behind here, so i guess i'll be less surprised when I get '19 in a few weeks and it loses MR now 🙂 Still has it as I mentioned in '17.

[jfjoa]

Thanks for all the great responses. 

I think, based on what I am hearing, the the remote desktop would be the most viable solution. Although I will need to decide how important this is since I may only need the rendering 3 or 4 times a year. I will also look at the Cloud rendering as an option based on the number of times I need it. Of course, as we discuss this, I have someone asking for a concept video. 🙂

Is the Fusion 360 Cloud option encrypted? If I need to render a proprietary concept, I will have to ensure that the IP is protected. Any public exposure, even incidental, could effect IP filings. 

One question about 3DSmax. I am coming at this from complete ignorance. I have found out that another group in the company uses Arnold. Does 3DSMax create a rending file which I could ask them to render using Arnold or does 3DSMax have to have direct access to Arnold to do the rendering?

[-niels-]

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@jfjoa wrote:

One question about 3DSmax. I am coming at this from complete ignorance. I have found out that another group in the company uses Arnold. Does 3DSMax create a rending file which I could ask them to render using Arnold or does 3DSMax have to have direct access to Arnold to do the rendering?

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Arnold is embedded in 3DS Max through a plugin, but depending on the software that group is using you can probably export a format that they could use for rendering from 3DS Max. (.fbx is very likely possible)

They might be able to import the inventor model as well, though it might have to go through a neutral format like .step

If there are multiple licenses for Arnold in your company it might be possible to set it up in a way that uses your network.

I won't comment on that further though, you'll have to speak to (network) licensing experts for more info on that.

[DarrenP]

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@jfjoa wrote:

 One question about 3DSmax. I am coming at this from complete ignorance. I have found out that another group in the company uses Arnold. Does 3DSMax create a rending file which I could ask them to render using Arnold or does 3DSMax have to have direct access to Arnold to do the rendering?

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yes with 3ds Max 2018 & higher, Arnold is part of 3ds max but Arnold does not come with the network rendering licenses this will have to be purchased separately