Fairly complicated Network Rendering

StevieD

Still using DS 4.6 on a Mac.      ---   Below is a disscusion that started what I am doing now, if you are interested in some background. 

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/65613/package-an-animation-project-to-render-on-another-machine#latest

I have access to a network of at least 25 machines. I have my main machine that I have DS installed with all my assets, plugins, lights, etc on it. This is the one I do the work on.  I want to render on some of the other machines while I work on something else. Most of my renders takes weeks to finish. I'm doing image sequence animations. 

I have solved many problems that got me to this point but I can't figure this one out. If you are interested, I can lay it out in more detail what I had to do up to this point because it isn't as easy as it might seem but it does work many times.

Trying to be as breif as I can, What I do is to open a project up that resides on my main machine over the network on one of the machines to be rendered, using all the assetts from the main machine. The only thing I had to copy over to the network machine was the Advanced Lights Set which wouldn't load into the scene (I mean the lights were in the scene but wouldn't light untill I copied them over to the render machine because I guess they reside in the applications plugins folder). Everything else seemed to load up from the original Machine. I had a render going over the Thanksgiving Holiday which worked fine, while I had a different render going on my main machine as well at the same time. They both worked although the network machine seemed to be slowish, I think.

 Here's my current problem! I have this masive scene with some animation as of now but much more will be added later. This scene must have several Hundred items in it. yea, it's cool.  I have no problems on the main machine where it was built, it loads right up and works fine but on the network machine, it says that there are some files missing which are in "data/auto_adapted/etc/etc/etc". The directory or Library path seems to be the same where all the other assets are loacated, there are assets here and there all over the place. In the scene the assets are represented by grey shaded box actually almost resembling the objects they should be,, sort of. When you render the scene these assets dissapear completely without any trace and the rest of the scene renders perfectly.   So I can't figure out why this bunch of files aren't found. I did have to play with the content manager to get the network copy to look in the other maching to get the regular assets but I can't seem to point DS to where these filse are in order to load them. I even copied those directories over to the network machine  and added it to the manager but that didn't work either. Any advice?

Thanks,

Steve 

 

 

 

StratDragon

You need the files in the data folder and if you are rendering directly in DS you need to verifiy the data folders are correctly mapped to the applciaiton.

As for doing this over the newtwork; Iray and 3Delight do not support network rendering out of the box.

3Delight requires an external license (approx $2,000.00 US) then you would need to export the scene as an .RIB file

Iray requires an Iray server which is proprietary to Nvidia.

you could do this with LuxRender (via Reality or Luxus) which supports network rendering directly from the UI, but each system in your network needs as much RAM as it would require to render the scene by itself in order to assist. If the scene exceeds the RAM for a single machine in the network that system will stop contributing to the rendering calculations. It also removes all necessity to have data files shared or textures collected as the software manages this for you, so you don't need any of the overhead you currently need to do this with Studio.

prixat

Those files in the /data folder are not installed. They are created and maintained by DS as items are loaded.

Have you tried just copying the data folder over?

StevieD

prixat, I did try copying the whole "data" folder over to the network computer but I am going to have to continue to try put it in different locations, hoping to find a location where it can find it.I am also fooling with the Content Directory Management to try to tell DS where it is.  But if it updates the data in the data folder this sounds like it might cause problems if it is not where it originally was, no?

StratDragon, As I actually define Network Rendering you run the render from the location you built the scene (or at least the computer where it is loaded) and it send nodes to one or more network computers to help the home base computer with the render, sending the files back as they are done. Technically this not what I am doing and I shouldn't have called it Network Rendering. I am going to a network machine with DS on it but I am opening a file from the home computer through the network, using just the assets from the home computer then rendering it singlely on the Network machine, I have actually just began to do this and it does work reasonably well for most of the projects I tried but then I ran into this file missing problem which I haven't yet been able to solve.  I really like doing it this way too because I can work on something else while the other project is rendering. I need to solve this problem though.

prixat

Are both machines pointing to a common network drive?

If the content drive appears with different names to each machine, that would be enough to mess up the file paths.

StevieD

The nature of the way I am connected to our network, turns out to have the exact same name no matter where I login. The computers themselves have completely different names but the log in is exactly the same. "Macintosh HD/users/my name/etc/etc/etc". This is funny because when I connect to my computer from the network computer, it ignors the computer name totally and starts the identifacation with "Macintosh HD/users/".  Infact I had to make sure I connect to my machine first before I open up DAZ Studio, I had to delete the DAZ3D directory (the content directory) on the network machine that DS makes when it is installed in order for DAZ to find the assets on my machine and not look on the network machine. I also had to use only that path within the Content Directory Management and deleted the default path (which was on that network machine).  I actuall open up DS then go to "OPEN", navigate to my computer to the  "scenes" folder, open up the project using "open" BUT if I do this DS does find all the assets associated with the project,, most times.

   All the assets, including the  "data/auto_adapted/etc/etc/etc" are within "Mycomputer/Users/mylogin/Daz3D/etc/etc/etc" and the project finds everything but it doesn't find the "data/auto_adapted/etc/etc/etc". I can't figure out exactlt why. I have several other projects that don't use the "data/auto_adapted/etc/etc/etc" directory that works perfectly!  Though, one exception I've noticed are the plugins which need to be in the "applications/plugins" folder on the computer where DS is currently being run from (in this case the network machine). As I said above, the "Advanced Studio Lights by Age of Armour" were inserted in the scene but wouldn't light up the scene until I copied the plugins folder over to the nertwork machine. After Ii did that every "Advanced Spot,Distant, etc" lights. 

   So I guess the question is what makes the "data/auto_adapted/etc/etc/etc" folders different from all the other assets, even though it resides in the "Library" with all the other assets?

Currently this is my only problem for this task. I haven't been able to play with it yesterday or today, probably not tomorrow but some advice would be welcomed.

Thanks

Steve