This page provides information on the Distributed Rendering rollout under the System tab in V-Ray's Render Settings.
Overview
Distributed rendering is a technique for distributing a single render job within a single frame across many computers in a network. There are different approaches of doing this, but the main concept is to reduce the render times by dividing different parts of the rendering pipeline and giving each participant different parts of the job. The most common way to do this is to divide the frame to be rendered into small regions (buckets) and give each machine to render a number of them. The results are then combined into the final image.
UI Path
||Properties editor|| > Render > System tab > Distributed Rendering rollout
(when Enable Distributed Rendering is turned on from the System tab)
Parameters
Enable the Distributed Rendering option to activate the Distributing Rendering rollout.
Asset Sharing – In order to proceed with DR all machines need to have access to all scene assets. This button allows you to specify how those assets are shared among the render nodes.
V-Ray Transfer – Allows render servers to automatically download missing rendering assets from the client machine. This includes textures, V-Ray proxy files, IES profiles, GI solution caches (irradiance map, light cache), X-Ref scenes etc.
Absolute Paths – Load all assets using absolute paths.
Shared Directory – Specifies the location of a shared location, containing all the assets.
Check Asset Cache - When enabled V-Ray checks cashed assets before trying to transfer any assets.
Render Only On Nodes – When disabled, the client machine (the one from which the user initiates the DR render) also takes part in the rendering calculations. When enabled, the client machine only organizes the DR process, sends rendering tasks to the render servers and displays the final result.
Use cached assets – When enabled, the render servers keep the downloaded rendering assets between different DR sessions. When disabled, render assets are automatically deleted once the render server disconnects from the client machine at the end of the rendering. When enabled, assets are kept in a folder on disk. By default it is named vray_assets_cache located in the temporary folder for the user that runs the V-Ray DR spawner. The location of the assets cache can be modified with the environment variable VRAY_ASSETS_CACHE_PATH. Modified assets are generally detected and re-transferred to the render servers even though they may already exist in the render servers' caches.
Abort On Missing Assets – When enabled the rendering is aborted if one of the render nodes doesn't have access to the scene assets.
Cache limit – Allows you to specify under what conditions the assets cache is cleaned up. The possible values are:
None – Assets are never deleted from the render servers' cache.
Age (hours) – Assets are kept for the specified amount of time. At the end of the rendering, the render servers delete assets that have been transferred before the specified time limit.
Size (GB) - When the size of the assets on a render server exceeds the specified amount, least recently used assets are automatically deleted at the end of each render until the folder size is less than the limit.
Limit – Specifies the value for the limit of the asset cache. This is either hours or GB, depending on the selection of Cache limit type.
Port – Allows you to manually specify the port at which to run distributed rendering.
Notes
- Every render server must have all the plugins and texture maps in their proper directories loaded so that the scene you are sending will not cause them to abort. If you have mapped your object with a file named JUNGLEMAP.JPG and you do not have that map in the BITMAPS directories of the render server installation - you will get bucket rendered at that machine as if the map was turned off.
- When you cancel a DR rendering, it may take some time for the render servers to finish working and they may not be immediately available for another render.