© Bertrand Benoit

Table of Contents

This page introduces and provides information on setting up Distributed Rendering.



Overview


 Distributed rendering is a technique for distributing a single render job within a single frame across many computers in a network. There are different approaches to doing this, but the main concept is to reduce the render times by dividing different parts of the rendering pipeline and giving each participant different parts of the job. The most common way to do this is to divide the frame to be rendered into small regions (buckets) and give each machine to render a number of them; then get the results and combine them into the final image.


Organization


In V-Ray, DR is done completely through TCP/IP protocol, which is the standard protocol of the Internet and thus the most common protocol that is supported by the hardware. The distribution management is divided into a render client and one or more render servers.

Render Clients 

The render client is the computer from which the rendering is started. Unreal and V-Ray for Unreal must be running on this computer in order to start DR. The process initiated by the render client divides the frame into rendering regions and distributes them among the render servers, and later collects the results. In any DR job, there is only one render client.

Render Servers 

render server is one of the computers in the network that does the rendering work. A render server requests render data from the render client, processes it, and sends the result back. In any DR job, there can be many render servers.


Installation Notes 


To use the distributed rendering feature you need to do the following steps.


1. Have V-Ray for Unreal installed on the Render Client. Choose in the Advanced options Standalone only and V-Ray will be installed in C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\V-Ray for Unreal.


 



2. Have V-Ray Standalone running in server mode on the Render Servers. You can do that by going in Start menu > V-Ray for Unreal > Launch V-Ray render server (Unreal).


 



A console window will appear saying "Entering server mode - waiting for render requests on port 20207". Your Render Server is ready to accept render jobs.


 



Distributed Rendering Settings


To enable DR in Unreal Engine you go to V-Ray Settings > Performance > Distributed Rendering.

1. Enable the use of DR.

2. Specify the render servers by clicking the + button to manually add a server by entering its IP address or network name followed by its port number (default is 20207) (e.g. 10.0.3.126:20207).

3. Check the Output Log to see the Server accepting and starting the render job.