[solved] Team Rendering

[LeSill]

Hello, folks.
I'm calculating an animation, and because I have another slightly older PC in my workplace, I thought it could be useful to take advantage of another available processor. So I've chosen to try TEAM RENDERING. I've installed Cinema on the other PC and launched the client. Of course, I've installed the Corona plugin, etc. To avoid errors, I had to remove missing textures and materials from the scene. I followed the tutorials and everything seems to be working properly. Okay, almost fine.
The client window does not display any information (see the image). It's just a grey background. The cinema server indicates that everything is working properly; I believe the blue dots represent this. When I check the processor on the cient PC, it does not appear to be busy, thus I assume it does not contribute to the calculation. The rendering time did not vary significantly.

Any clue what the problem could be?

Many thanks

[bnji]

Hi there,
There are a lot of things that could be causing unexpected behavior, so...
Let's try discarding one by one, shall we?
Do you have enough Team Render licenses?
Do you have enough Corona Render Node licenses?
Do you have any firewall that might be blocking connections to our servers?
Does the Rendering Node have an active Internet connection?
Are you using the same C4D and Corona versions for both the main PC and the Rendering Node?
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

[LeSill]

Hello and thanks for your response.

- Cinema team render licenses should be alright; because I only have one team render node connected, I believe there can be up to five.
- Corona render node, according to the documentation: A render node computer just renders the scene and does not display the Cinema 4D user interface, so only one render node license is required. The master machine and renderer nodes must all run the same version of Cinema 4D. All Corona Renderer instances must be the same.
- I will check the firewall, but if the team render node/machine icons are green or blue, it implies it is connected.
- The node's internet connections are fine.
- Cinema and Corona are the same versions; there was a mismatch at first, but I resolved it.

Are there any additional ideas?

[TomG]

"A render node computer just renders the scene and does not display the Cinema 4D user interface, so only one render node license is required."

No, only one GUI license is required. However, to render on two machines simultaneously, two render licenses will be required. A standard Corona license is a GUI and a render node license, while a separate render node is just a render node with no GUI license. So, with one Corona and one Corona Render Node license you can have 1 GUI open on one machine, and have two machines rendering.

Without a second render node though, only one machine can actually be rendering at once (e.g. if you just have one Corona license), and a second license (which can be just a Render Node license, which is cheaper) will be needed for the second machine if both are to render at the same time.

If you have a Corona license from before Corona 8 which you have kept subscribed and active since then, then you will still have 3 Render Nodes with it; but if you have subscribed since the release of Corona 8 when the licensing changed, you'll need an additional Render Node for each additional machine that will be rendering at the same time.

[LeSill]

Thank you for your explanation.
It's a shame that the Corona license doesn't include at least one render node. Another engine includes render nodes as part of its licensing. Because the other PC is older and has a slower CPU, it may not make sense to use it at this time.