9 replies to this topic

[daveglanz]

Hey all,

I'm relatively new to C4D, having only been using it a few months.

We recently got the C4D Net Render server up and running, but I'm having major issues with net rendering and GI.I've searched the forums here, only to find general issues with GI, not with GI and net rendering.

2 frames -

With Net Render:
http://dropbox.teamg...e/stage-net.jpg

Without:
http://dropbox.teamg...tage-no-net.jpg

I have my GI settings to "IR + QMC (Net Render)," 1 Diffuse Depth, 80 percent, and I'm exporting a Targa Sequence. I've tried to render with simply "IR (Camera Animation)" and get a pretty similar result.

Would anyone have any idea how to remedy this situation, (without suggesting not using Global Illumination please )

Thanks!

[dan_hin]

How about not using GI? ha. ha.

Ahem. Can you post a project file or at least a grab of your render settings?

[edrhine]

Does anyone know if this is fixed in V11.5 . I know 11 has major GI flickering issues on net render. Is it possible to have the GI solution calculated and saved and then have each machine on the farm use that same solution rather than calculate its own. I have been tasked at my work with figuring this out and would appreciate and help or ideas.

Thanks

[Mr. Sam]

Does anyone know if this is fixed in V11.5 . I know 11 has major GI flickering issues on net render. Is it possible to have the GI solution calculated and saved and then have each machine on the farm use that same solution rather than calculate its own. I have been tasked at my work with figuring this out and would appreciate and help or ideas.

Thanks

You can try
-Upping the stochastic samples
-Bake textures when possible and make sure you are using stick texture tags
-Make sure your net render system is running either all mac or all pc. Gamma problems result from mixing and matching which can create different types of flicker.
-Keep the complexity of lighting down in your scene. Certain combinations of using sky objects and hdri spheres together with GI can cause some machines to render the scene differently than others.

Also try using object buffers. If you reduce the complexity of what you are trying to render, you get the chance to up your GI quality settings settings where they matter most.

[daveglanz]

Well, I tried a few things without any success. Here's my file if anyone wants to take a look:
http://dropbox.teamg.../dave/stage.zip

Thanks guys

[Mr. Sam]

Were you able to find out if your net render farm has macs and pcs on it?

[daveglanz]

Well, we're rendering right here at work - we have 3 intel macs that I'm using.

Would it make a difference if the actual computer (server) the frames are being rendered to is a PC or not?

I found this, but I'm not sure this is up to date:
http://support.rende...7/entries/65132

[Mr. Sam]

Well, we're rendering right here at work - we have 3 intel macs that I'm using.

Would it make a difference if the actual computer (server) the frames are being rendered to is a PC or not?

I found this, but I'm not sure this is up to date:
http://support.renderrocket.com/forums/64707/entries/65132

This is talking about dynamics such as clothide where you need to "save solution" before render. This essentially saves every dynamics interpolation as a new keyframe for each frame. This to keep each machine in the render farm having to calculate the dynamics positions and causing errors that way. Its a similar problem but not the same.

Have you tried baking your textures yet?

Edited by Mr. Sam, 05 November 2009 - 08:16 PM.

[daveglanz]

I Haven't had a chance, but baking the textures seems a bit confusing to me. I added a tag, clicked "bake" and dont' see much of a difference.

[daveglanz]

So I thought I'd post the solution we found for the net render GI problem.

The first step is to render the GI pass, with everything unchecked except for "Global Illumination" and "prepass only" checked under the GI cache settings. I rendered from one computer, and copied that .GI file onto the server we're using for net rendering.

The 2nd step is the copy your project to the server, and run the net render job with GI, loading the .GI file rendered from one computer. Seems to get rid of the flickering / artifact issue that was the problem.