Mental Ray Network Rendering

[Nero]

I've been looking at the support.discreet.com forums, and from the looks of it, it seems as though if you want to set up a network rendering farm, and if you want to utilize mental ray as your renderer, you need to have a license for max (or mental ray im not sure which) in EACH computer on that farm. This versus the unlimited number of machines for the default scanline renderer for one license.

Whats going on here?

or are they talking about something called distributed bucket rendering, a different topic altogether?

[rrockafellow]

With 3ds max 6 you only have a mental ray license for up to 2 processors on a single machine. If you want network render you have to pay for additional machine licenses of mental ray.

The brazil renderer is similair where you have to buy more licenses to render on more machines.

Vray and I believe Final Render give you free network rendering with their rendering plugins.

Originally Posted by Nero

I've been looking at the support.discreet.com forums, and from the looks of it, it seems as though if you want to set up a network rendering farm, and if you want to utilize mental ray as your renderer, you need to have a license for max (or mental ray im not sure which) in EACH computer on that farm. This versus the unlimited number of machines for the default scanline renderer for one license.

Whats going on here?

or are they talking about something called distributed bucket rendering, a different topic altogether?

[Nero]

What a jip! And i had a whole plan for using mental ray too.......

[Matt Hallock]

You can still use mental ray, and I would suggest it over the the default scanline, you'll just have to test with the rendering system to bring the quality down to a level you like that allows maximum speed. Right now, my per frame average during my test render sessions have taken anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour a frame I stress due to my output materials emitting as light.

[Nero]

I tried a simple network render, it gave me a licesing error...grrrrr...

Then again, nothing is stoping me from just manually copying the max scene to each machine, and manually setting it to render a few scenes rather than having backburner do it.......

[Salik Syed]

Originally Posted by Nero

I tried a simple network render, it gave me a licesing error...grrrrr...

Then again, nothing is stoping me from just manually copying the max scene to each machine, and manually setting it to render a few scenes rather than having backburner do it.......

That method def. works! render a couple on each machine splice them all together.... pain to do tho.. be sure to get ur frame numbers right...tho it doesn't matter too much you can cut the video file down etc.

btw USE MENTAL RAY no matter what even test renders everything SCALInE sux compared to mental ray at all times : mray is faster & better looking
I use scaline for : NOTHING