TAPESTRY: The Art of Representation and Abstraction

Rhino + V-Ray: Distributed Rendering

What's it all about?

Rendering can take a long time. It takes less time if the job is split up amongst several computers, or done on one superfast computer. V-Ray has the ability to perform this "distributed rendering" if you know what you're doing. It calls this "distributed rendering" but lots of folks just call it "using a render farm".

Creating the Render Farm

This step could be done centrally, or by someone else, so you might ask around to find out if there is a render-server (a computer that does renderings for you) already set up. If not, here's what you do to set one up...

Launching DRSpawner

This step should be undertaken on a computer where V-Ray has been installed, and that you wish to use as a render-server. It can be done on the same computer you use to launch or start distributed renderings, but there's not much point since V-Ray will work there anyway.

Step 1a: The Easy Way

Using the Start menu, look for "Chaos Group" folder in the "All Programs" area and drill down to "VRay for Rhino > Distributed Rendering > Launch the distributed render spawner". If that works a window will open that says "waiting for jobs...". Don't close that window! Go to step 2.

Step 1b: The Other Way

In a sort-of hidden directory on the computer (if V-Ray is installed) is an application you need to run.

From the "Start" menu, open a Windows Explorer window for "Computer".
Double click on "C:\ (local)" or whatever your local hard disk is called.
At the top of the resulting window, enter "C:\ProgramData\ASGvis\" and press return. The resulting window should all you to drill down to "Common\x64\vc10 (or vc101)". Near the bottom of this folder you should find XMLDRSpawner.
Double-click "XMLDRSpawner" to launch it. If that works a window will open that says "waiting for jobs...". .
A command-line window will open. Minimize (do not close) this window.

Congratulations! You've created a render-server. The only problem is, you don't know how to connect to it to get renderings done.

Step 2: Finding the IP-address

Computers on the internet are uniquely identified using their "internet protocol" or "IP" address. While these are sometimes fixed (invariant), or even assigned to a name, like "quicksilver.be.washington.edu", it is more common in labs for them to be assigned temporarily as machines come and go on the network. A computer will have the same ip-address for the duration of time that it is using the network, but it might change when it is rebooted. You need to find out the ip-address of your render-server computer before you can use it in V-Ray.

From the "Start" menu, enter "cmd" in the search/command window.
In the resulting command-line window, enter ipconfig and press Enter.
Scan the display for "ipv4 address" and write down the address (something like "128.95.168.233". This is the address by which you'll connect to the render-server.

Accessing the Render Farm

Now that we have established a render farm, it's time to put it to use. For this, we return to our primary Rhino & V-Ray computer.

In the V-Ray "Options" window, locate the "System" roll-out.
Click the check-box next to "Distributed Rendering" to enable the distributed rendering feature.
We need to configure the server settings -- Click the "Hosts" button
Now click "Add Server" and enter the ip-address we saved previously. This tells V-Ray how to contact the render server.
You may also be able to click "Discover servers" to find other configured servers. It would be polite to make sure their owners are OK with you using them, but ...
Click the check box next to each server you want to use in rendering, then OK the dialog. The next time you render you should see (a) more "white boxes" jumping around on the screen, and (b) numbers in the white boxes ("render buckets") that name the server responsible for that part of the rendering.

From now on, each time you ask V-Ray to render, it will distribute the task to all available servers--the remote one in addition to the local V-Ray installation--and the job will get done more quickly.

Notes:

You can create and use multiple render-servers.
When rendering, V-Ray sends a copy of the geometry to each render-server. Textures are not sent, except as file paths. Since the render-servers each have a complete V-Ray installation, the "built-in" textures can be found in the same location (with the same path) on both the primary and the render-server, so they will be properly rendered. However, any special or unique textures you may have defined will not be processed in the distributed-rendering process (unless you manually transfer the image files to each server).
While renderings are in progress, your VFB will show "buckets" with the name of the each contributing render-server.

Last updated: April, 2014

[report bug]