Distributed Rendering Problem....PLEASE HELP!!!

[Ragazzaccio]

Here at my work I have been trying to set up distributed rendering. The problem is when the buckets of the DR servers render in the image, the color is MUCH more washed out than the buckets of my local machine. Basically my image turns out to be a checker pattern after the render is finished. It's almost as if there is a gamma problem with the DR Servers.

 

I had opened max on all machines of the render farm and changed the gamma in the max preferences. I had enabled Gamma 2.2, with an input gamma of 2.2 and an output gamma of 1.0 which matches my local machine. I also have Affect Color Selectors and Affect Material editor checked.

 

As for my textures, everything points to a mapped drive on our main server. I don't see how this would be a problem with the textures because the textures do render out, just extremely washed out.

 

If anyone would be so kind to shed some light on this issue I would GREATLY appreciate it. Thank you and I hope to hear back.

 

NOTE: This only happens with textures, it does not happen with regular Vray Shaders which have no diffuse map.

Edited November 18, 2011 by Ragazzaccio

[matthewgriswold]

Do you pre-calculate your GI solution on your machine and have the other machines read those files, or calculate via distributed bucket rendering? I would try pre-calculating your GI on your own machine. Make sure to save the GI files where the other machines can find them, probably your mapped server drive you're using for the textures.

 

Let me know if this makes any difference...

[Ragazzaccio]

Hi thank you for your reply. I cant say that i do pre-calculate my GI. I'm mostly using it to try and do test renders while working on my scene making changes. Calculating GI into a file honestly wouldnt serve me very well unfortunately. If i were to use DR for final renders that would be a good solution though. Even if pre-calculating my GI would be a bypass to this problem, I would like to fix the problem entirely and try to figure out what really is going on.

[Cyberstyle]

Are you mixing processor brands between your local machine and your servers?

[Ragazzaccio]

Processors are all Intel, but a few of them have different chips in them. Although even the buckets rendered by the machines that have the same chip as my local workstation still make washed out buckets.

[Cyberstyle]

Is the problem consistent without using Vray? Does the same thing happen with Mental Ray DBR?

 

What happens if you net render a test image via Backburner individualy on each machine.

Are all the images from each machine identical/lighter/darker etc... compared to your workstation.?

 

Have you tried testing individual servers by selecting one at a time with DBR and seeing if it is only caused by

a particular machine?

 

Does each render server have the same Service Packs etc... installed as your workstation?

 

Try to identify and eliminate all the possibilities.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Cyberstyle

[Tommy L]

Its most likely a permissions issue, network related. The different buckets are maybe from machines that cannot read your precalc-ed light map. You can test this by checking the 'check for missing maps' box in the settings rollout of the render panel.

[Ragazzaccio]

Tommy thank you for your reply. I apologize for the late response I have been out of town for the holiday, but I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

 

As for the GI, I am not using any precalc-ed GI. As for check for missing maps, I had checked it and there are no missing maps. All textures are loaded from a mapped drive on the main server which holds all of our texture maps. As for the texture maps, they are rendering within the buckets assigned to the DR servers, the problem is they are rendering all washed out. The only buckets which render correctly are the buckets assigned to my local machine. My supervisor thinks there may be an issue with the client and the server not talking to each other correctly (in simplistic terms). I understand this can be a complicated issue to work through when it comes down to network problems. From your experience is there any type of specific permissions I may need to set? All machines are running Windows 7. If you can shed some light on what may be causing this problem I can try to look into what types of permissions need to be configured in order for this to work as it should. Once again I greatly appreciate your response.

 

Its most likely a permissions issue, network related. The different buckets are maybe from machines that cannot read your precalc-ed light map. You can test this by checking the 'check for missing maps' box in the settings rollout of the render panel.

[Tommy L]

hmmm, not sure. if there are no missing maps then its not permissions...maybe its a gamma issue, but in all the latest versions of max the gamma settings are carried with the file. Is everything in the asset tracker UNC mapped?

Another thing to check is that all the installed versions of VRay are the same over the farm.

Have you tried DR with another scene, to make sure this is not file specific?