Distributed Rendering - Are My Nodes Timing Out?

[Dave - Tennsco]

Hello,

I'm new(ish) to Corona. My company has used iRay for the past 5 years. We decided to switch to Corona this year.

We were using a render farm in the past and I'm trying to get that up and running with Corona. I've only started testing this on 2 floating nodes and my main workstation. I have my workstation set up and DR is enabled. DRserver.exe is active on both of my nodes. After "Search LAN", the nodes show up in the render setup window. I have my image output saved to a network drive that all have access to. The nodes are connecting to the workstation and starting the render process.

Once my workstation completes one of the frames, it seems like it starts processing the next frame that was submitted to  a floating node. The job that the node was processing does not show up in the network folder until my workstation finishes processing it.

I've attached a sample image to show the simplicity of the scene. Resolution is set to 6600 x 5500.

I've read many of the articles and can't seem to find a solution.

My only guess would be the nodes timing out, but they are only running for 7-10 minutes.

[TomG]

Just so I understand the situation correctly.

DR always uses all machines to process the same frame at the same time. So if doing an animation, all two or three machines (workstation plus node or nodes) will all render frame 1, then the workstation will show that as complete (in less time than it would have taken for it to render it alone), and then save it and move on to frame 2.

For handing out different frames to different machines, so that the workstation does frame 0 (more slowly as it will be doing it on its own) and node 1 does frame 1, and node 2 does frame 2, then Backburner would be used, without Corona DR.

Based on what you describe, it sounds like it is working as expected, all machines working on just one frame at once - but may not be how you understood it to work :) Let me know if I have misunderstood! DR is generally used for rendering single frame large resolution images, with Backburner being used to render animations.

[Dave - Tennsco]

AH! Mystery Solved. I've gotten used to backburner for the past 5 years where jobs rendered individual frames unless settings were changed to split a job. Thanks for the help.

[TomG]

NP! You could of course use DR for animations too, all machines working on the same frame at once should take roughly the same time as Backburner sharing out individual frames to different machines - more flexibility with Backburner though as you can, for example, stop the workstation contributing if you need to use it for something else, then put it back in when it's free, and so on; for that reason, I've always used Backburner for animations.

[Dave - Tennsco]

Does DR have the ability to create a work schedule for floating nodes?

Backburner allows us to block out our work day, queue jobs during the day and allow them to run overnight. Our main focus is rendering out 24 angles of our product, then sequencing them to be a 360 degree interactive feature.

If we decide to use Backburner in the future, do we just submit to network rendering like we did in the past and run server.exe? Or do we have additional steps that need to be taken?

[TomG]

DR doesn't allow you to create a schedule for nodes to come in and out. It can find new nodes if "Search during render" is enabled, but that's about it in terms of scheduling functionality.

Other than running the Corona Licensing Server, everything with Backburner is the same as usual - you'll need to run the Backburner Manager, Server(s), and Monitor, and then Submit to Network Rendering as before.

Hope this helps!

[Dave - Tennsco]

That helps a ton! I appreciate the prompt responses.

One last issue - When using DR, I end up getting 3 images for each frame. It appears to be one of materials applied, one gray scale and one silhouette. Is this a setting that I can change? I'm only needing the image with the materials applied.

[TomG]

Do you have any render elements set up in the scene? Sounds like some masks are in there - you could delete those or just set them to inactive, if they aren't needed.

[Dave - Tennsco]

That was it! Thanks again!

[TomG]

NP!