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Vray RT GPU Distributed Rendering ?


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Hi,

 

I was hoping some of you could tell me if vray rt distributed rendering allows you to utilize multiple gpu's over multiple render node machines in the same way as distributed rendering works for using cpu's across multiple machines.

 

I've been trying to research this but have not found any definitive answer I see that vray rt allows distributed rendering but do not know if this is limited to only using cpu's across the network.

 

Many thanks in advance

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Hi,

 

I was hoping some of you could tell me if vray rt distributed rendering allows you to utilize multiple gpu's over multiple render node machines in the same way as distributed rendering works for using cpu's across multiple machines.

 

I've been trying to research this but have not found any definitive answer I see that vray rt allows distributed rendering but do not know if this is limited to only using cpu's across the network.

 

Many thanks in advance

 

I suspect you can, but it's not clear is it. I am currently experimenting with distributing RT to a render node and a laptop, but using the CPU mode.

 

I just tried switching to GPU mode, but haven't got that to work yet because RT crashed on the laptop. (But it looks like it might work with some tweaking; My render node is dual CPU but with no GPU, while the Laptop has a modest Nvidia card. However, I don't think the GPU drivers on my Laptop are up to date enough for RT, and I read that GPU driver requirements can be quite specific for RT).

 

Good luck, and let us know if you figure it out. :)

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Hi,

 

I was hoping some of you could tell me if vray rt distributed rendering allows you to utilize multiple gpu's over multiple render node machines in the same way as distributed rendering works for using cpu's across multiple machines.

 

I've been trying to research this but have not found any definitive answer I see that vray rt allows distributed rendering but do not know if this is limited to only using cpu's across the network.

 

Many thanks in advance

 

Yes it can, in both, production mode and Active Shade mode, under the VRay RT tab, it has a box for Distributed Rendering, add the servers that have the cards and render away. I tried it out before. What it does not do, however, is use the RAM of the multiple GPUs and combine them, which I guess is a silly thing for me to say; but at one point I was excited that if I added to 2 4GB GPUs I'd get 8GB of RAM, but I'm unhappy to say that this is not the case.

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Thanks for the replies they have been a great help, I'm currently refreshing my whole setup and originally was going to build a separate huge workstation with 4 GPUs and dual Xeon's but now that it has been confirmed that I can do network gpu rendering I'm going to build a smaller M-atx workstation machine with dual 970 gtx or a 980ti and then have two older Hp z600 render nodes with a Tesla 6GB M2090 card in each.

 

Hopefully this will be enough for some quick render times on a reasonable budget.

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Thanks for the replies they have been a great help, I'm currently refreshing my whole setup and originally was going to build a separate huge workstation with 4 GPUs and dual Xeon's but now that it has been confirmed that I can do network gpu rendering I'm going to build a smaller M-atx workstation machine with dual 970 gtx or a 980ti and then have two older Hp z600 render nodes with a Tesla 6GB M2090 card in each.

 

Hopefully this will be enough for some quick render times on a reasonable budget.

 

Steve, make sure you have enough CPU RAM. I found out through my own tests that all the data goes through the CPU first and then it gets sent to the GPU, however those calculations get done, etc. I had a rendering with Displacement grass on and my rendering reached about 24GB of CPU memory and hang there. Apparently in VRay LC also consumes lots of memory and if I had BF + BF it would have taken 19GB of CPU memory and it would have processed, as I sent my file to Chaos to review and that's what I got back.

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Yes it can, in both, production mode and Active Shade mode.

 

Let me correct myself, I have tried myself today and I can't seem to make them appear. I'll be working on this some more, as I remember having done this successfully in the past. You can shoot also a question on the ChaosGroup forum, which is great in answering questions and giving you support.

 

EDIT: and I have tried it again, and what you need to do is to turn on VRay RT Server on your slave machine and it gets detected. Then it should work.

Edited by padre.ayuso
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No problems steve. So I have been trying DR with other slaves and it does work, the only problem with my machine I think I have some firewall settings that does not allow for the full communication to happen between the machines and so I can't DR neither with RT nor CPU, but you follow what I wrote earlier and DR should be a cinch. Let me know how that goes.

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