3D Render Farm

[claudiodemarco]

Hi everyone,

 

I have 3 computers and a server computer

i want to use 3 computers to render one single rendered frame

 

i am experementing with backburner but i from what i can see is that i can use backburner to assign the other computers a frame to render and carry on working - therefore when a scene has 3 cameras to render, i can essentially render all 3 frames at once from my PC i am working from as opposed to actually saving and opening the same max file on each computer - which is awesome as this can save me time

 

when i want to use all 3 computers i am learning i should try use vray DR spawner

i have managed to set it up but now i am testing some scenes and when i render using my main PC only, the render is 4:33 - when i use all 3 computers the render takes 5:03

 

how is this possible? what am i doing wrong

 

Im using 3d max 2014 and VRay 2.4

 

Thanks so much to anyone that can help me:cool:

[Scott Schroeder]

What are the speeds of your computers? If your render slaves are much slower than your primary machine, DR can/will take longer. How are the speeds of your network? DR can also take longer due to the data needing to transfer from each machine.

 

When you DR, are you actually seeing the buckets from the other machines? If so, when do they show up?

[claudiodemarco]

Hi Scott,

 

Thanks for the fast reply

 

Comp 1 is i7 2.67 12 GIG DDR 1333 Ram

Comp 2 (main comp) is i7 2.8 24 GB DDR1333

Comp 3 is i7 2.8 12 GB DDR1333 Ram

 

so all 3 are similar

 

yes i see the buckets with the compyters different names on as the render "renders"

 

perhaps the network speed? How do i test network speed?

 

Thanks again

[RyderSK]

The way Distributed rendering in Vray works automatically is that each slave has to compute its own LightCache (which will be useless anyway) unless you assign them precomputed one. Since they are slower, the main workstation will start rendering Irradiance cache before the Slaves even finished the LC. This way, you end up distributing only the latter part, the beauty pass rendering. By that time, the network can't be bottleneck anymore since the slaves already have all the data.

 

Another possible problem can be slaves swapping data during rendering if they can't accomodate it in their memory. This would only occur if you go over 12GB since your slaves have 12 but your main workstation 24.

 

It's hard to see almost linear scaling in such low render times where various not-multi threaded processes can take more time the full rendering.

[claudiodemarco]

Hi Juraj,

 

thanks for the info - starting to understand

 

do you have any suggestions for me?

 

Thanks

[RyderSK]

Try computing the LighCache locally and saving it. Then try Distributed rendering with the option of loading the LC from file. Set some high setting so you get atleast 20-30min. of render time.

 

To test against network bottleneck you can do material override so textures won't be used.

[ericadenny]

Hi

There are other solutions than distributed rendering .I'm just building a render farm for myself at the moment.

Not far ago I found a good solution for a home render farm here if anybody still interested:

 

http://www.modularcreation.com

They are selling cases for 6 nodes. It worked out quiet well and cheap (depending on config) about £3-4000 for 6x i7 4770 nodes. Really quiet and working 24/7 which is very good for a render farm.

 

Basically I'm doing a lot of animation/fluid simulation. Nice case.

[ericadenny]

Hello,

 

I'm in the same shoes. I want to build a render farm for myself and when checked the Google I found a render farm company in the UK. There are a lot data on their site about the node what they are using. Maybe it will be useful to others.

 

Six nodes with i7-4770 CPU

 

Idle noise: ~46-48 dB

Idle consumption: ~ 150 Wh

CPU's temperatures: ~ 25-30 °C

 

100% load noise : ~48-50 dB

100% load (rendering) consumption : ~ 650 Wh

100% load (rendering) CPU temperatures : ~ 65-70°C

 

It doesn't look like a noisy system. I'm sure it isn't for everyone. They are selling cases too. Worth to check their website : Modular Creation render farm