A little render farm help please

[dpolcino]

I'd like to get a little clarity on how I'm supposed to set up my small network in order to work with FumeFX.
I have a laptop/license server which I usually work from for its convenience.
I have a main workstation, it's the most powerful. I like to use this sometimes as well.
I have a slave machine, purely to receive render jobs.

My preferred render engines are VRay 3 and Final Render.

As it stands now, when testing with VRay, only the server/laptop is rendering out the buckets, the workstation and slaves are sending back black/blank boxes. They work fine on non-FumeFX scenes.

I have full installs in both slave machines right now, and the pure slave machines doesn't have a Max license (render-only). In order for me to render, what should I do?

Uninstall the full licenses and install the SL licenses? Or.... ?????

[dpolcino]

I think I figured this mostly out. FumeFX doesn't work with VRay's distributed rendering, but if I switch to Backburner, it seems all three computers are doing their job!

[sitnisati]

Hello,

I am wondering what happens if you send image to be rendered to just one render slave using VRay.
Not sure why VRay wouldn't support FumeFX for the distributed rendering..
Make sure that you don't have the BB sim enabled inside the FumeFX when network rendering.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec

[dpolcino]

Hi,
My guess is since VRay doesn't use BackBurner at all, its built in Distributed Renderer doesn't recognize any FumeFX features?

[sitnisati]

Hello,

Is it maybe a stand-alone VRay installation ?

Kresimir

[dpolcino]

So are you saying FumeFX should work with VRay 3's distributed rendering module?

[sitnisati]

Is it maybe a stand-alone VRay installation on the render node ?

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec

[dpolcino]

No all three have the plugin version in 3DS Max, one license/server machine. DR does work with VRay just not with FumeFX. But like I said, FumeFX does work with backburner and vray.

[sitnisati]

Hello,

Thank you for the info.
It is possible that VRay does not support FumeFX for DR as the VRay operation migh be different for DR compared to nonDR rendering.

I will ask Chaosgroup if they have any suggestions.

Thank you.

Kresimir Tkalcec