Renders die if I designate a network slave with Luxus

bashrag_7b41cbcd6d

Summary: If I designate a network slave through Luxus my render dies at.

[2013-08-30 00:26:15 Info: 0] Shape #123 (mesh): Mesh: splitting 8448 quads .

If I don't designate a slave it doesn't die, and renders normally.

I'm running win 8 64bit
Luxrender 1.3rc1
Luxus 1.0.0.5
Daz Studio 4.6

I realize that this is a weird problem since the problem could be Studio, Luxus, Luxrender, or Win8. What I'm really wondering is if anybody with Luxus can reproduce the issue.

Herald of Fire

This is a Luxrender issue, not Luxus. What is your slave machine system specs? Even though your PC can handle the render on it's own, if the slave machine is too underpowered then Luxrender needs to wait for it to catch up before it can begin rendering. All of the geometry and texture information being handled by your main PC also needs to be handled by the slave. There's a lot of information to be had, so if you're using a low memory slave, then it's likely unable to keep up.

The reason I point this out is because it's failing on a mesh subdivision. Subdivision naturally means more memory and processor time is being used on both master and slave PCs. It's always best to divide the work between relatively powerful PC's if you're trying to speed up render times.

kesh

I'm not sure that be the main cause, at least in my case luxrender first compiles the scene and once compiled starts the render and transmits the commands to the slave, so this is the point where the process would fail (after the scene loading, i.e. after the stage where the OP error seems to happen).

My suggestion to test and possibly isolate the problem would be to start rendering on the main machine only, and once the render is running, add/enable the slave/network renderer.

In other words: do not enable the net/slave through Luxus but do it only from Luxrender GUI.

PS i'm not sure 1.3RC1 is totally stable and compatible with the current Luxus bridge: i'd suggest you roll back to 1.2 and try again to see if the problems persists.

bashrag_7b41cbcd6d

kesh said:

I'm not sure that be the main cause, at least in my case luxrender first compiles the scene and once compiled starts the render and transmits the commands to the slave, so this is the point where the process would fail (after the scene loading, i.e. after the stage where the OP error seems to happen).

My suggestion to test and possibly isolate the problem would be to start rendering on the main machine only, and once the render is running, add/enable the slave/network renderer.

In other words: do not enable the net/slave through Luxus but do it only from Luxrender GUI.

PS i'm not sure 1.3RC1 is totally stable and compatible with the current Luxus bridge: i'd suggest you roll back to 1.2 and try again to see if the problems persists.

Excellent suggestions. I'll give it a shot.

(3 minutes later)

You nailed the problem. When I add the slave manually, I immediately get an error that there's a version mismatch between the slave and the server. I don't know why it doesn't throw the error if I add it through Luxus, but I don't really care. I'd built this box more recently than I'd built the render farm, and hadn't thought to upgrade the clients.

Great job. Thanks.

StratDragon

I'm glad you guys found the problem but HOF's statement is correct and something to keep in mind.

My experience with slaving systems in Luxrender is that If the slave system does not have the power or RAM to render the image on it's own it's not going to be able to assist in the network effort. The good news is RAM is cheep and as long as the CPU is on the list of approved LuxRender options it may just be a matter of a RAM upgrade.