Urgent Animation Question VRAY

[denham]

I understand that you cannot calculate the irradiance map (multi frame incremental) thru backburner on multiple nodes, but can you calculate the irradiance map thru backburner on only 1 machine? The reason is I need to caclulate the irradiance map on a machine besides my main workstation.

 

I would just calculate it on the other node by itself, avoiding backburner entirely, but I don't have a licensed copy of max/viz on that machine.

 

Thanks in advance

[Chad Warner]

Yes. Just send the irradiance map calc as a network render job, and you're good to go.

[creasia]

You can totally do it on another machine. Rendernodes don't need to be installed with a license, so get the install disk and put it on another machine. Vray is also friendly this way, but you need to check your manual for how to work the license.

 

I do afterburner IR maps all the time. You have to be carefull though. If you resend the job you have to make sure that you take the IR map with the 'from file" typed in with a file name that may not be created yet. You need to also make sure that the path you save it to is identical to the path you will be using on both your working machine and your network rendering machine. If this is not done successfully you will get blackened renders with no IR map.

[denham]

Thanks for the responses.

 

I had to leave work before the irradiance map/light cache was done.

I used a dependancy on backburner, (which I didn't know about before) to wait until the IR map/Light Cache renders are complete before picking up the final rendering.

 

The Vray manual was a little confusing, as it says you cannot render the (multi frame) incremental w/ backburner. Just not on multiple nodes.

[Matt Sugden]

I seem to remember you can merge IR maps as well, so you could in theory do portions of your animation IR map on different nodes then merge them all back into one, to load up into your final anim.

 

That is correct isn't it? or have I just invented a new feature!

[denham]

but won't the transitition (starting & ending frames of different sections) appear to flicker? Since the irradiance map is an approximation the transitition between these 2 segments will flicker, right?

 

We're having big problems with our network: Our animation is 720x480, I've already precalculated the irradiance map & light cache. But the renders are taking 25+ minutes. But when I try to render everything from scratch on one machine (not using precalc irradiance map/light cache) it renders in 6 minutes. The machines are very similar. I guess our maps are large & it is putting a strain on the network. I've already added the IR/LC map to each node so that it is not pulling that off the network.

 

I think I can probably get faster rendering times using Distributed rendering & & not precalculate. Any ideas?

[Scott Schroeder]

You can render multiple imaps then merge them together. For example, you have a 200 frame animation path, you can render every 25th frame and save that specific frames imap, light cache, etc. By rendering every 25th, or whatever number you deem necessary, you are ensuring that your light map will cover your entire animation path.

 

Before you go to submit all 200 frames, merge together your imap into a merged imap. You can also merge light cache's if you use those as well. Then simply put tell vray to use the merged imaps and light caches when you submit the final render.

 

There are better explanations as well as better examples on the vray forum.