[simmsimaging]

I installed from the newest 2.1 installer on the site, but when I had preview display issues I grabbed the patch and tried that too.

Coop render launched from Studio (demo, but I have a temp license for 3 nodes) seems to be rendering, but I can't get a preview to happen from the co-op render or any of the nodes.

If I look at the render node log on one of the slaves it does say "display sent successfully" but nothings shows in the manager. First try was with a larger (5K) render, but no joy with even 1K.

EDIT: rebooted everything, and re-exported the scene. I can get a preview now, but it takes anywhere from 2-3 minutes to preview a single node, and about 3-6 minutes to preview the co-op render. This is at 1K (Multilight is on, and 2 channels selected). Is that normal?

b

[simmsimaging]

Back at it again - this time with a full upgrade Installed the latest available version of 2.5 on all nodes.

I'm having some luck with small images previewing (like 800K-1MB) but trying a 4K render and I cannot get a preview from any of the nodes, or the cooperative render, to show up. I left it for a minimum of 15 minutes each time.

Is that kind of lag expected, or is something wrong?

/b

[Mihai]

Try going to File Preferences in Node/Manager/Monitor and turn Verbosity to Debug mode, check any messages you get in any of the components.

[simmsimaging]

Try going to File Preferences in Node/Manager/Monitor and turn Verbosity to Debug mode, check any messages you get in any of the components.

Thanks Mihai, will do. There is a render still running from last night and it won't change the logging till I restart the apps apparently.

Btw: after 6 hours there is still no preview so it's not a time thing.

[simmsimaging]

I think I found the previews, even though they are not displaying.

I set up the temp directory for the Manager to point to a folder on a shared network drive (same drive the render output is going to). In that directory I found a series of "display" folders that have a bunch of MXI's in them (current job MXI files are about 2gB). They correspond to the preview requests.

So it seems that the preview request is generating an MXI from each of the nodes I requested, but it's not displaying?

/b

[Aji Enrico]

I am guessing there is a timeout on the Maxwell network preview system and that it is reached before the transfer is completed, or that the antivirus is locking the files while scanning.
May I ask what OS(s) you are using?
If I remember correctly, XP has a transfer limits for SMBv1 (120MB/s?), while SMBv2 for Win7 (& Vista?) doesn't have that.
Also Win7 treats SMB differently where antivirus programs might scan SMB files and folders as if it where locally and therefor decrease performance significantly.
Generally, using different OS's and different SMB protocols might cause some headaches

Try some performance tests by transfer files manually between computers.
Try test several small files like 100+ files each from 100kb to 1meg and big files each from 100meg to 1gig.
If you find that you have problems with the operating system(s) itself try disable antivirus and firewall.

[simmsimaging]

Thanks Aji

4 of the machines are running Vista 64 and two are on XP 64.

I am not running any antivirus on this machine (only one node is running it AKAIK). All firewalls are off as well. File transfer between the machines is normally not an issue - I use the same nodes and workstation for VRay network rendering all the time.

Even if I request the display from the local machine (the target networked drive is actually local to my workstation) it doesn't work, so I would think it's not a network transfer timeout?

/b

[Aji Enrico]

Have you tried not to use a node on the same computer where manager is running?

[simmsimaging]

Yep, that's what I meant when I said I requested the display from the local machine. I have tried requesting the co-operative preview, and from each of the nodes, including the local one. The display mxi seems to get generated and dumped into the temporary folder for the Manager, but none display. In this case they are quite large (2GB each). Is it just a size cap?

I cancelled the cooperative render in the interim and had to manually merge the mxi images (seems like that doesn't happen if you stop a network render?) and that merge took about 25 minutes, so maybe size is just the problem?

/b

[simmsimaging]

Scaled down the resolution and tried it again. It seems that size is not the issue, but turning of multilight seems to help. It's pretty slow going so I haven't tried it a bunch of times, but turning off multilight enabled me to get a preview, and since turning it back on I cannot.

MX is generating the preview image and sending it to the temp folder defined in the Manager, but it is not opening the image in the Monitor interface. I can, however, just find it manually and check it out in Maxwell in a separate window.

Here is the deep debug log for the node I requested the preview from (local machine):



Here is the log for the Manager that is still waiting for the image:


Any other info I can provide to help resolve it?

b

[simmsimaging]

I noticed an error popping up on a few of the other nodes - it did not seem to impact the render at all, but not sure if it's causing problems I haven't seen yet. Any ideas what it's all about?

(see error in orange in screen cap)