How do I setup network-distributed IPR in H11?

   5770   5   2
User Avatar
Member
28 posts
Joined: July 2005
Offline
Gang,
I recently started using IPR for some of my PBR renders in H11 and found it quite useful! I have a special ROP that I use with lower quality settings and it's certainly good enough as a preview…

But I just read in the H11 release notes that there's support for network-distributed IPR and I'd love to know more about how to set that up. I did a few searches but I haven't uncovered any details. Do you have any pointers for setting this up?

cheers!
gregory yepes | http://www.GregoryYepes.com [www.gregoryyepes.com]
User Avatar
Member
40 posts
Joined: May 2009
Offline
It's just like normal remote network rendering.

mantra -H host1,host2

It's important to not have spaces in between the hostnames and the commas.

It's certainly useful but I found that it has problems with refreshing automatically.

http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/MantraRemoteRendering [odforce.net]
User Avatar
Member
28 posts
Joined: July 2005
Offline
Thanks so much for the pointers, I think I'm very close:

mantra: Host host1: invalid version detected 0.0.0 (not 9.0.0)
mantra: Host host2: invalid version detected 0.0.0 (not 9.0.0)
mantra: Host host3: invalid version detected 0.0.0 (not 9.0.0)
mantra: Host host4: invalid version detected 0.0.0 (not 9.0.0)
mantra: Host host5: invalid version detected 0.0.0 (not 9.0.0)
mantra: No remote hosts are available for rendering

I'll go through the page you sent me in more detail and turn on logging, I'm sure I'm doing something silly…

cheers!
gregory yepes | http://www.GregoryYepes.com [www.gregoryyepes.com]
User Avatar
Staff
2540 posts
Joined: July 2005
Offline
I believe you are literally using the machine names as host1,host2 and you know what, nowhere in this thread nor in the OdForce help does it mention that you have to substitute in your real host names or ip addresses for your remote machines. It is assumed you know to substitute host1,host2,… with the actual names of the remote host computers.

You can use ip addresses or the physical name of each remote computer that identiffies it on the network.

There are a few ways to get this information. One way to get this info is to use a web browser and go to the ip address of your network router. All network routers list ip addresses and if available the physical names of all network connections. Use the names if available and if not, use the 9 number ip address exactly like it appears in the list.

Most routers use DHCP so the ip number addresses can shuffle around when machines or the router reboot so are not guaranteed to be static unless you set up your router like this. Best to use the actual computer names.
There's at least one school like the old school!
User Avatar
Member
28 posts
Joined: July 2005
Offline
Bless you for being so thorough in your explanation Jeff, instead of just telling me to get my head out of my butt! I simply swapped the real names of the hosts on this post out of my own paranoia.

At first, the error messages I received mentioned they could not connect to the remove hserver. So I then started the hserver on each of the machines, and the errors then changed to the ones I included above. When I include my own host as either the explicit name or localhost it works, but I seem to be missing a piece for the remote hosts…

I've been pointed to the following docs on Odforce:
http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/MantraRemoteRendering [odforce.net]

So when I'm back at work on Monday I'll try to add some logging to see if I can better identify what's going on… Thanks again for the help Jeff!
gregory yepes | http://www.GregoryYepes.com [www.gregoryyepes.com]
User Avatar
Member
7025 posts
Joined: July 2005
Offline
Hi Gregory,

I got this recently too. Turned out to be the netmask of the Hserver was wrong.

Basically, on the remote machine (that you specify with -H) it has to have the proper version of Hserver running, and the proper netmask.

What I do is set up a little ssh script that will ssh to the machine(s) you want to render with -H on, and quit Hserver and restart it with the -M -m flags set correctly.

In our case that was hserver -M +.+.*.* -m +.+.*.* but of course if you are on a larger network, that might be different.

Hope that helps! Note that it's not even close to a linear speedup, though again depends on your network speed and config…

Cheers,

Peter B
  • Quick Links