Network Rendering Question

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Dear Houdini users,

I am trying to test a network render, but I got an error message below.

<br>

I am not sure what is wrong with the setup. Please review the setup shots below, and let me know any ideas to solve the problem.

Thanks,

Tojam

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Network Rendering
OS: Window XP
Version: Houdini master 9.0.794 on both computer
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Computer 1: server name - ckim (License server computer)
a hserver is running








===============================
Computer 2: server name - prodlab1 (a network computer)
a hserver is running <br>









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Edited by - Dec. 22, 2007 18:07:21
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There might be a hserver running but it doesn't have any licenses…render9.0 has 0 of 0 available licenses. You can also see that it can't serve licenses regardless…

Iirc you should point the hserver from the renderhost to the licenseserver. On the cli run sesinetd -v or -help and/or hserver -v or -help to get some options regarding remote setups.
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Thanks, for your help. I used hserver -S ckim in the remote computer, and now I can render it using the network computer. However, the rendering time is strange.


I did a test render with “mantra” and “mantra -H localhost,prodlab1,prodlab2”

mantra
18 seconds

mantra -H localhost,prodlab1,prodlab2
36 seconds

The network speed is 10MBPS. Do I need to modify any Houdini system files or any other changes? Please let me know any advice.

Thanks,

Tojam

Computer 2: server name - prodlab1 (a network computer)










Computer 1: server name - ckim (a license server computer)

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Depends on what you're rendering, and in this case it's probably unrelated to your network(although you really should be networking at 100BT if you plan on doing any serious rendering - once you start pushing pixels on a 10BT network, things will begin to choke). Don't expect reasonably trivial renders to be any faster over a network - it will always be slower. There's overhead in splitting up the process. This applies to any renderer. Also, be aware that the particular method of ‘-H’ means that an entire copy of the whole render gets sent to each machine, it has to do the whole startup process, then they each work on their own buckets and send the pixels back to the launch system. This means, especially for such a small render(18 seconds), that your slowest machine will drive the whole process.

When you start getting into more serious renders, you'll notice a benefit, keeping in mind the above issues.

Cheers,

J.C.
John Coldrick
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