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Network Render - More than 800%?

Question asked by Rusty Mahony on Oct 11, 2013
Latest reply on Oct 22, 2013 by Rob Rodríguez

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We recently added a Boxx RenderPro to our network and are trying to put it to work. The problem we have is that we can only (apparently) send so much render data to the Photoview 360 client loaded on the Boxx. Example: 5.5 minute test render only utilizes 10.8 seconds of the Boxx's time. Are we limited to the 800% client workload setting or am I missing something? When we watch the final render, the blue boxes (data offloaded to network client) remain in the same area while the orange (local rendering) boxes move around the image, apparently doing nearly all the work. Is this a limitation of the Photoview 360 rendering? Do we need to buy Modo?

Thanks in advance,

Rusty

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Anna Wood Oct 11, 2013 4:37 PM
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This means that your render node is not working. Buckets were sent to the render node but are not processing. They are stuck. Not uncommon with the master/slave setup for the PV360/MODO network render client. Buying MODO will likely not help, it suffers the same issues as the clients are the same. It does not work all that reliably well in my experience.

Not sure if it has improved with MODO 701. I haven't tried master/slave rendering on my render farm recently for large format frames. If I have a chance this weekend I will install SW2014 SP0 and give it a try. SW2014 uses the MODO 701 code.

Read through this wiki and see if it helps making sure all the correct ports are open.

http://sdk.luxology.com/wiki/Network_Rendering

An option if you have a spare license is to load SW on your RenderPro. With a remote desktop session you can launch SW and render directly on the RenderPro.

Cheers,

Anna
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- Rusty Mahony @ Anna Wood on Oct 22, 2013 10:44 AM
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  Update: I disabled the Windows Firewall on the RenderPro and the blue buckets started moving around a bit. Unfortunately, we're still not getting much help from the Boxx as a PV360 Client. Running the render on a 2-yr-old Dell T1600 with Boxx as a network client, "Job A" takes around 17 minute. We can run the same render directly on the box from SW2013 and it'll finish in 57 seconds. When I watch the client screen on the Boxx, it'll render a bit then wait, render then wait, which I imagine is the group of buckets sent to the client, waiting while transferring data back and forth. Both machines are connected at 1Gbps on the same switch, yet the amount of data being transferred (according to Resource Monitor) is less than 1Mbps. Is network rendering in PV360 just that inefficient?
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  - Anna Wood @ Rusty Mahony on Oct 22, 2013 11:21 AM
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    Rusty,
    
    Try sending less buckets to the slave. Go with 100 or 200% and see if that helps. You get diminishing returns on the number of buckets sent.
    
    Yes, the master/slave setup that is used by PV36/Modo is pretty weak. It is not reliable at all in mine and many others experience. It is very inefficient keeping track of all the buckets.
    
    Your best option is to render directly on the RenderPro and forget the master/slave option.
    
    Cheers,
    
    Anna
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    - Rusty Mahony @ Anna Wood on Oct 22, 2013 12:23 PM
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      I forgot to mention that we tried 100 and 200% with no noticeable change in render times.
      
      As for rendering directly on the Boxx, we had purchased it with the intention that it would sit in the server room waiting for render jobs and not take up a full SW Premium license. We're looking into a trial of Modo and one of Keyshot to see if either offers a better network render option.
      
      Thanks for the replies, Anna. I'm going to leave this discussion as unanswered for a few days in hopes that someone else has had a better experience with PV360, maybe by way of registry hack, etc.
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      - Anna Wood @ Rusty Mahony on Oct 22, 2013 5:40 PM
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        Modo will not offer a better option if you are looking at master/slave rendering. PV360 uses the native Modo master/slave network rendering code. The PV360 code is not custom to SolidWorks, it is the Modo code. You need to think single render node / single scene for large format frames. Spread the multiple frames across multiple computers.
        
        Keyshot has much better Master/Slave rendering. But they charge a ton of money per thread (not per core) and you have to renew every year. A quad core computer with hyper-threading enabled will need 8 cores of licensing from Keyshot.
        
        If you go with Modo you want to look into render queue manager software. I use Deadline by Thinkbox Software on my render farm. This will allow you to schedule renders on your RenderBoxx and have a ton of control with lots of statistics about your renders.
        
        Modo is cost effective if you look at your render scheduling differently. Do not use master/slave. If I needed five, large format frames I would schedule the 5 scenes, through Deadline, on five of my render nodes. Deadline will manage all of the frames. Or send 5 separate scenes to one render node and have Deadline keep track of the queue.
        
        Deadline launches command line Modo. You are able to have up to 50 render nodes for free with your seat of Modo. With a good render queue manager you could set up any number of your company computers to render out Modo frames.
        
        Cheers,
        
        Anna
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        Rob Rodríguez @ Anna Wood on Oct 22, 2013 5:04 PM
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        I don't really have any more to offer. Anna has better knowledge on this subject. I run all my renders directly on my Boxx. If I encounter large renders (by pixel size), a large number of renders or an animation I typically just send it to Anna to process on her farm. It's a lot easier to have her run it and her rates are super reasonable. It's also a lot easier to meet deadlines having Anna process out the images much faster than I can and I can be setting up more projects on my office machine.
        
        www.renderbay.com You should give it a try.
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Network Render - More than 800%?

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