batch bake mentalray network rendering

bugo

hey guys, i have a question here that its killing me, I really hope there´s a way to do it. I need to bake a 8 million mesh high and I need to setup a network rendering (small renderfarm) to bake it. But I dont seem to find where and how. I already have 4 pc setup with mentalray standalone. Any ideas? Is that the same as rendering a frame batch?

Also whenever i try to batch bake a high mesh of 1 million or over the texture goes black and it doesnt bake
Please help!

Mark Dygert

Which software is the render coming from Maya 3dsmax or can you send the job from MR standalone?

I'm not sure in MR stand alone will do it, I've never tried that before.

BUT you could use BackBurner it comes with 3dsmax (maybe with Maya also now?) You'll need to install it on each "server" or render node you want to use and then launch server on that machine. From your master machine launch "Manager" and "Monitor", default settings should work fine as long as they're all on the same network. Don't launch monitor or manager on the server/nodes it will only complicate things.

Then from your master machine set your job to network render, each of the nodes/servers should show up in the connect window. Set it to use all available servers. Then check monitor for errors. There's a really good chance that since its only one frame from one job it will send it to only one server and distribute the buckets. Maybe MR stand alone has options for that, I'm not sure...

bugo

Unfortunately no backburn for maya yet, but what i am really wondering if its possible to bake maps with mentalray by satellite render. I dont want to render frames, only baking.

Mark Dygert

I think it still runs into the same issue, a bake is one frame of one job and doesn't distribute to more then one node. Unless MR can farm out each bucket and stitches them back together... which I think is possible with some software, but not sure how to do it or if MR stand alone even does it =/

The cool thing I've found with homegrown render farms, is that even if I'm rendering on my main system I can still normally keep working at the same time. So even if it dumps it to one system and that happens to be your main system, it might not keep you from working on other things.

bugo

thanks Vig, I am going to try out.