We are using distributed bucket rendering on our network with no problems. My question is if its possible to exclude the local computer from rendering while all the satellites are processing the job? This way I can continue working without having to wait for the render job.

Thanks in advance!
Jason

Using 3DS Max Design 2012 x64
XP Pro x64

Jason, there’s a few of us that would like this option.  I don’t know of any way to do it, however, if you have multiple cores, you can set the software to use only one of them.  In Windows Task Manager, find 3dsmax.exe, right click it, and select Set Affinity.  Uncheck all but one box to free up those cores while running Max.  This also works if you have Hyperthreadind enabled, as it reads the HT as another core.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

The only way I know how to do it is through Backburner. Choose a render node to be the DBR master and set it’s rayhost file with other nodes for the DBR slaves. Submit the job to BB using just the DBR master node. This won’t give you the RFW on the workstation though.

Hi Chris, Samab,

Thanks for your input! Setting processor affinity seems to do the trick at first glance, though I’ll have to try with some larger files later on.

Samab, how do you use Backburner with DBR? We have 2 licensed copies of Max 2009 and use the 8 included satellite licenses for DBR - from what I read in the Max help file, my understanding is that we need to have all the satellites licensed to get them to DBR with Backburner. Is this correct?

Jason

Using 3DS Max Design 2012 x64
XP Pro x64

from what I read in the Max help file, my understanding is that we need to have all the satellites licensed to get them to DBR with Backburner. Is this correct?

BB nodes dont need a license, and you can have upto 9999 of them, if you add the IPs of other nodes to the rayhost file of a node and submit a job to BB with DBR enabled, that node will use the cores of the other nodes in the rayhost file. You can set up DBR teams of 5 nodes (if they are dual processor), one is the master and has the other 4 slaves in it’s rayhost file.
For example, you have 20 nodes, 1, 6, 11 and 16 can be set up as masters with 4 slaves each (8 processors, which are hopfully multi-core). In BB Monitor create a Global Group called DBR Masters containing the 4 masters. Submit a job to BB with DBR enabled using the “DBR Masters” group. BB will show 4 nodes working, but you actually have 4 teams working the idle ones will are working for the masters.

Hi Samab,

Thanks for your instructions, I got it to work! I had to restart the BB service after editing the rayhost file on the master computers but that’s no biggie.

Just to clarify, we have 26 available dual core nodes with only 2 that are fully licensed with Max. So using this method, I can render with MR on all 26 nodes even when the 2 licensed nodes are not included in the DBR Masters group? Essentially this means that DBR without BB in Max uses the 8 included nodes while DBR with does not. Interesting.

Jason

Using 3DS Max Design 2012 x64
XP Pro x64

Any machine can have upto 8 additional processors as satellites, note it counts processors not cores, so if your nodes are single dual core machines, then the masters will take 8 slaves so you will have teams of 9. I said 4 slaves before because I assumed they would be twin processor nodes.
So with 24 single dual core machines you could have 3 teams of 8, thats 3 masters with 7 slaves each, working simultaneously. Typically on different frames unless using strip rendering with DBR. I’ve not tried strip rendering (never mind combining it with DBR) since I do animation, not stills so I have nodes doing different frames of a sequence.
Do you do stills or sequences?

That makes sense. Of the 26 computers, 24 are single dual cores, the other two (with max licenses) are dual xeon HT.

We have not done any animation using MR as we’re just starting to experiment with it. Currently we’re just using it for stills but hope to use it for an upcoming animation. I have seen some people posting that when using MR in BB, lighting and shadows flicker in animations with moving cameras. This is another thing we will be finding out shortly.

Thanks again!!
Jason

Using 3DS Max Design 2012 x64
XP Pro x64

Hello, just to follow up on this - I just rendered a 3000 frame animation using DBR teams in Backburner. Everything appears ok however one small issue has arisen. I have a “week schedule” enabled for all of the satellites however even though some are listed as unavailable, the DBR Masters still render to them. The only way I was able to get around this is remove the unavailable satellites from the rayhost files. Is there any way to get DBR in Backburner to obey the schedule as it would be nice to not have to keep changing the rayhost files when people need their computers.

Thanks,
Jason

Using 3DS Max Design 2012 x64
XP Pro x64

Is there any way to get DBR in Backburner to obey the schedule

Not that I an aware of, because as far as the satellite know, they are not doing a BB job, it’s the raysat service that’s making them work not BB server which does obey schedules. Only the team masters running BB server are controlled that way, so you could set them up with week schedules and their slaves would follow them. If you don’t want all the nodes working on a job you can assign the BB job to just one master, or make another group of just two.

Thanks, that’s kindof what I figured. The way I have it set up now, the masters are nodes that can run 24/7 however their slaves cannot. As you mentioned, I’ll just set the masters’ schedule and reassign the job to a secondary group. I tried setting up another tier above the DBR Masters but it still filters down the hierarchy to the initial slaves from the rayhost files.

Jason

Using 3DS Max Design 2012 x64
XP Pro x64