The latest version of V-Ray features a lot of new features and probably the most interesting of them is the VRay Distributed Rendering feature , In this tutorial we are going to set it up within Cinema 4D , this tutorial is targeted to windows users , but vray DR can also be used with Mac OS .
Before you read this tutorial , make sure to read some of the info posted by the developers on
the forum . this tutorial is solely based on personal knowledge and some collected info about
Network rendering .
What Is Distributed rendering ?
Distributed Rendering is a technique for distributing a single render job within a single frame across many computers in a network. There are different approaches of doing this but the main concept is to reduce the render times by dividing different parts of the rendering pipeline and giving each participant different parts of the job. The most common way to do this is to divide the frame to be rendered into small regions(buckets) and give each machine to render a number of them. Then get the results and combine them into the final image.
Things you need :
- 1 : A main Computer : and other Computers as slaves ( Known normally as slaves/Nodes or slave machines ) : essentially , you need the main computer that you work on , and other machines to do the heavy lifting or rendering .
- 2 : Fast Wired Connection ( Via a desktop switch ) : DR requires a fast connection due to the large amount of data being sent and received from and to the main computer and the slaves in my case , i only used a cheap desktop switch and connected my main machine and the other computers using a standard DSL cable , the switch is fast enough to handle DR and fast file sharing ( Internet is not required so a router is not essential for DR is this case ) .. i have yet to test wireless connections but they seem to be too slow for the task
- 3 : A main Server (optional) : this is only needed of you wanted to keep all of your assets in one place to be raced by all machines
After we got all of the components , its time to set up the DR software wise . for that , you
have to follow the instruction in this thread
and install the Standalone on all of the slave machines ( its not important to install it main
machine unless you are going to decide later to use it for DR from one of the slaves )
After we have done that , its time to run it from V-Ray within Cinema 4D
In the DR Tap in VRay Render settings , now we can add the IP addresses that we can get from
the slave machines ,
Where do i get the IP from ?
In my case i got the IP numbers from the *slave machines from the active or connected ports (
local Area Connection )
you can do that by using the windows command line ( Start Menu > Type CMD > Enter ) after that
type in the command ipconfig and then your ip list should show for the available connections
Make sure that the slave machines are running the standalone in DR mode ( as described in the
links ) and then copy the IP numbers from the slaves to the DR list
Now when you render , the buckets from the slaves should be rendering along side the Master
or Main machine !
Things to consider about the current DR :
- C4D and external shaders are not supported yet , so you have to use the new VRayShaders for every texture and use only the VRayShaders if you consider rendering with DR
- Make sure to replace the UVW file in the standalone with the provided by the developers
- You Can Save the IP list and use it later in different scenes
*Edit : the latest 1.9 update features a limited support for c4d shaders .
Comments 45
How can I setup DR on Mac OS X?
any luck jet? i’m using thunderbolt and works fine with team render but not on vray dr, I’ve tired many times the ip seems ok I’ve set it up on both machines, but no more threads appear while rendering :(
http://www.macworld.com/article/2142073/connecting-two-macs-using-thunderbolt.html easy set up for thunderbolt and server.
Hello, i’m glad there’s someone else out there with mac! Are we able to have a mac main computer with WIN nodes and/or vise versa?
in team render it is posible win/mac and mac/win there’s even a company that builds render farms using mac minis fully charged with quad i7 and 16 gigs of ram super silent, also came back to report thunderbolt connection works with sketchup vay dr! sadly I still can’t get it working under cinema 4d might be something I’m missing.
V-Ray Standalone OSX almost at the end of the page blow the Windows part http://vrayc4d.com/live/vrayforc4d-manual/overview/installation-vrayforc4d/#v-ray_standalone_osx
I have been trying to figure this out and found this info for setting up the DR cause I couldn’t get ti working according to the above description http://vray.info/tutorials/vray_distributed_rendering_and_backburner/
Author
Thats DR for Max , our DR setup is closer to maya which is different
how i can render only slave comps?
Author
am not sure if thats possible at the moment
So is the above method all we need to know? There seems to be a lack of detailed info on getting this working.
Author
yes , its all here .. make sure to read all of the info on the forum too
thanks for the info. I tried every thing that Google could proved me with on getting the DR to work. The slaves say they are ready the Main computer says is good to go. My main has 12 treads and slave has 4 and then I get Dr going and I get 24 buckets black spots on the test render scene and my slave cpu usage never changes. Do you know of an official C4d DR step by step? my main questions are do I need a .vrscene to to work and do I need to install this c4d file with the textures onto each computer? if so where? The instructions above seem super simple yet im missing something. thoughts? thanks in advance!
Author
Contact me please via the Contact page
enabling team reander machines or not have the same result no additional buckets
Hi Josef,
ich have a problem with DR: The Render Servers don’t use the Texture Maps. Even in a scene with only one object with a VRay texture (without C4D shaders!) the texture is not rendered. I use a Mac as client and one Windows Computer and another Mac as render servers.
I copied the textures to different places (including a third Mac), but nothing helps. The servers “say” “Failed to create object of type “C4DTex_Plugin”.
When launching the server on the Mac it says “Open of shared library `/usr/ChaosGroup/V-Ray/Standalone_for_snow_leopard_x64/bin/snow_leopard_x64/gcc-4.2/plugins/libvray_MtlGLSL.so’ failed because:
dlopen(/usr/ChaosGroup/V-Ray/Standalone_for_snow_leopard_x64/bin/snow_leopard_x64/gcc-4.2/plugins/libvray_MtlGLSL.so, 5): Library not loaded: ./lib/snow_leopard_x64/gcc-4.2/libglslang.dylib
Referenced from: /usr/ChaosGroup/V-Ray/Standalone_for_snow_leopard_x64/bin/snow_leopard_x64/gcc-4.2/plugins/libvray_MtlGLSL.so
Reason: image not found”
May be the is a part of the Problem …
Do you know what to do to get DR working?
Thank you very much
Markus
(Sorry for my english …)
Author
Hi Markus , the MAC standalone had few issues as far as i know
can you post this on the main forum ? http://www.forum.vrayforc4d.com/
Hi Josef,
thank you for your reply; in the meantime I recieved my copy of C4D R15 … and the problem is gone! :-)
Markus
There are no issues on mac dr josef. It works fine from c4d12-15
Hi Josef. I’m try to use DR Render (V-RAY 1.8) in Cinema 4D R15 but have a problem. Then I render in cinema I see only my buckets.
(System: Windows 7 64-bit cinema & v-ray the same version on each machines)
p.s I read your article and made all like you
Author
Hi . can you post some more details about your hardware please ?
different buckets have different colors and names , you can check also the message from the standalone
on the slaves and post it here
Hey Josef.
First post there, very nice job you’re doing…
I’m trying to set up DR at my current studio and I simply wondered how to prevent my local machine (master machine) to work on the renders I launch, since it is actually way much older (and less powerful) than the slave one.
Any help :) ?
Thanks a lot.
Author
Hi Adrien ,
there isnt a current way to do that unfortunately , all machines have to render
and the main is used for export
however , you can setup a custom number of threads of C4D ( under preferences > Render )
to be used with the master machines , this could help reduce the intensity on it , tho it will still
render a portion of the job given
Hi
I dont understand where to get the Standalone from and how to get it running. I found a demo on the chaos group website which has many restrictions. I installed it but i couldnt figure out how to start it and get it running over wifi network. can you help me?
Thanks in advance
Hi,
I’m running into the same issue of the slaves showing this error ( “Failed to create object of type “C4DTex_Plugin” ) and the render show black where the slave buckets rendered. Do you know what would cause this? I’m running Vray 1.9 , C4D r15 , and Studio Tools Pro 1.38
I can get DR to work fine without Studio Tools Pro, so I’ve concluded that is the problem. When I checked the present I noticed it was labeled 1.3 but when I checked the zip file sent to me, it’s labeled 1.38, but contains 1.3. Is it supposed to be labeled 1.3? or did I get the wrong file sent to me during the update?
Hi there guys,
I have managed to get DR working (in spite of the terrible instructions on vrays website). I am able to render over a wifi network perfectly fine but guessing a wired connection will be faster. That being said, do I need a network switch to connect two computers together or can I simply use a ethernet cable between the two?
I have tried connecting them directly, with a static ip on the salve computer, but it just doesn’t see it.
I suppose what I am asking is, do I need a network switch to connect two computers together which costs more money, or can I just connect them directly with a wire but I am currently doing something wrong?
Thanks.
Author
am not sure what do you mean by connecting them directly but i i spose you mean a direct wire from one to the other , as far as i know that might not work .
the switch is there to let the system know its a network of computers , and its usually very cheap ( cheapest would be the 5 port one which i have been using )
Hi! I installed the DR with 2 computers, but when I render appear many squares more darker and brighter than others and I don’t know why .. I install it wrong? Or, how I can fix it? Thank you very much !!
Im not sure if this could be done, but can you use a comp with c4d and vray on it as a slave or do you have to have vray standalone on all computers?
Author
Hey Mitch , you will always need standalone for the slaves , c4d+vray as slave is currently not an option .
Thank you for the info.
Did a render on vray dr and half of my frame ended up being black or misplaced textures, which looked like the buckets from my node.
I made a quick, smaller test scene and did another dr and everything came out fine… Is it my textures that are messing up from my other scene? Thank you.
-Mitch
Hello Josef, i’m italian therefore excuse me for my english.
I have the same problem as Markus: Failed to create object of type “C4DTex_Plugin”, but i use Windows.
I created via homegroup a folder with the project, but the client’s render is without materials.
How can i solve my problem?
Thank you very much!
Hey Mitsu,
I know that this is very late, but maybe it will help others.
If you get the C4DTex error, you can basically ignore it. Make sure that you are only using shaders (textures..noise..all that) only from vRay Advanced Shader (it’s at the bottom of the dropdown list). You need to change all your materials to vRayAdvanced Materials, and all the shaders used to only vRay Advanced Shader (then you can use your normal noise and all that).
I also found that the server required:
C++ Redistributable 2008,2010,2012
NET Framework 4.5
I am happy to help out for anyone who needs this, as I spent the whole day scratching my head.
Now if it would just support separating frames throughout the render farm like Blender does.
Hi Josef,
I have a question about the DR final rendering result. DR set up was very easy for me had no problem. But once the rendering start, every rendering part that has been done by slave doesn’t show any texture only white shade. And the rendering part that has been done by main computer it shows all the texture. What did I do wrong? Can You help me? I wish I can send the picture so you can see the details.
Thank you always.
PSM
sir please help me i am use c4d R16 Vray 1.9 Netrender Not work
please help me how to use i am same setting but not working
Hi!
I have the same problem. The areas where the slave machine rendering there is no textures,
and leave white spaces.
Can You help me, what is this issue?
Thank You!
Chris
The problem is due to old vray materials (Create>Shader>VrayBridge>VrayAdvancedMaterial).
To fix , simply add to VrayAdvancedMaterial Diffuse layer (for example) Texture Map |> VrayBridge>Vray Shader (Vray Logo).
With this method i resolve the problem with the textures, but i have the same problems with the illumination.
Hi Mitsui,
Thanx a lot! Now the slave machine rendering the textures, but
the result is different from the masters results (eg. rotated texture area
with the slave cores)…
Ihave no idea for this issue…
Chris
Hi Chris. Try to generate UV coordinates to all of the texture tags of your model in object manager. It helps sometimes, sometimes not.
Hi i cant get Dr to work got main cinema 4d on mac os and slave is windows it set to the same router but windows is wireless and i do see connection but no extra buckets in the render view T-T
have full installation on the mac and only slave installation on the windows do i need to instal something more or am i forgetting something?
Do you know how to correct the permissions for the V-Ray Folder within Program Files > Chaos Group? It seems that when I launch DR from my Windows 7 nodes I have permissions errors because it fails to load the UVWGenC4D.dll
I get an error detailing this failure of this 137th plug in, but the DR node command prompt window does detail that the other 136 plug ins are loading properly. I think it’s a permissions issue.
I think this also causes the incorrect shading / lighting when rendering from a Mac to this PC running Windows 7
hello,
I`m running on windows and I`m trying to get DR to work on two other machines in my office.
When i hit render the Master starts sending the scene to the slaves and after a few minutes i get prompted in the Slaves windows that they are receiving the file but the master starts rendering and when it`s finished i get prompted in the DR windows that an error has occurred and the file was not received. What am I doing wrong?
hi josef
when i render with dr render my gi passes is only 1,how i can set hight gi setting when i used distributing render,thank you :)