C4D Animation Process to Export and Render in Standalone

[nrygpu]

Can someone please explain the correct process to export an entire C4D animation to be able to render (animation) using Octane Standalone?
I am running C4D plugin 3.06, and Octane Standalone version 3.06 and have an 1,800 frame animation that I want to render completely using Octane Standalone. The reason is that I own more licenses of Octane Standalone and I need to render this animation across multiple GPU systems in order to complete it in a reasonable time. Each frame is 4096x4096px so the animation is going to take a long time to render. This is why I must spread it across as many computer as I can. I will likely end up buying more Octane Standalone licenses once I can confirm that this will work.

I have searched all over the C4D OTOY forum posts and can't seem to find a clear instruction on this. I also looked in the online Octane manual documentation and did not see anything there.

I was told that the best method is to export from C4D to ORBX but we tried that. When I open the 1.9GB ORBX file in Octane Standalone I do not see any option to start rendering the animation. I went to the batch render option and it only shows two frames. I ran a test render using batch anyways and the rendered output .PNG files of the two frames are not 4096px. They were more like 1900px resolution so it seems that the resolution settings did not export to ORBX correctly either.

Anyone's help on this is very much appreciated! I really need to get rendering on this animation and I am in a bind now. Thanks!!

[aoktar]

I have searched all over the C4D OTOY forum posts and can't seem to find a clear instruction on this. I also looked in the online Octane manual documentation and did not see anything there.

https://docs.otoy.com/#cinema-4d-v3-plu ... standalone

[bepeg4d]

Hi nrygpu,
if you could share privately the scene, I can have a look to see what is going on with your scene.
In general, it should work with exporting an animated .orbx file from Live View. But it must to be said that there are some limitations. First of all open the Octane ImageTexture manager and remove any c4d shader, and add an imagetexture node if you see simple bitmap nodes listed.
The Stage camera object is not supported, you need to export each sequence separately, or export only one .orbx, and then uce the c4d internal alembic export to have all the cameras in abc, but you need to work with nodes in Standalone to prepare all the Render Targets.
Another solution is to setup the Octane Render network system, since you seems to have a Combo license with several Standalone licenses, you can render inside c4doctane with the power of all yours GPUs in your LAN (max 20 per Master) without the need to split anything.
Here is a link to the documentation about this argument:
https://docs.otoy.com/manuals/products/ ... rendering/
ciao beppe

[BCres]

nrygpu,

I became a quick expert on this last week. There are two ways to accomplish this: (the second is much easier and works great)

The first way: Once you export your scene to the standalone Octane as you did with the orbx file, click on the bottom most node. Then click the second button down under the node inspector to collapse everything, then rexpand the "render settings" twirl down. There you will have a film setting and you can change your resolution. My .orbx files were almost 20gigs but they worked.

Then I found a much easier way to make the network rendering work:

Set everything up inside C4D (frames, resoution, path to save, etc.) and make sure network rendering is active in the Octane renderer and that you can see the other machines. Then save the scene and exit C4D. At the desktop run a line at a command prompt. Works from any directory. Mine looks like this...

"C:\Program Files\MAXON\CINEMA 4D R18\Commandline.exe" -render "H:\C4D EXPLORER WORK\2017\EXPLORER\THRONE ROOM.C4D"

The first being your path to the commandline.exe in C4D directory, the second part the complete path to the C4D file. Quotes are important.

Test it with a few frames. It actually obeys everything that was set up in C4D, including the save path. I had to go this way because PV inside C4D took forever.

There are some other switches for the commandline, but this works great. My Octane standalone machine in the other room cooks when I do it this.

Hope this helps.

[nrygpu]

Thank you for all the replies and help. It is great to see how awesome the Octane community still is. I got started with using Octane back in the Refractive Software days with v1.x

bepeg4d, it sounds like using C4D as you described as the master node is the most straight forward way. Just to confirm does this require Octane Standalone licensing on both the master node and any network based GPU render slaves? I only have access to one license of C4D octane plugin right now and then two octane standalone licenses.

I will need to be able to use the maximum amount of 20 GPU's to get this animation rendered in a reasonable time frame. Do I need a license of Octane Standalone on each of the render node slaves attached to the network? What I would really like to do is use a Windows system to run C4D and send off the animation render job to the network attached GPU nodes. However my GPU render nodes are running Ubuntu Linux. I would need to run two of the GPU linux render nodes along with the Windows workstation system on the same network in order to reach the 20 GPU maximum. However I only have 1x c4d plugin license and 2x of the standalone licenses available right now. Does this mean that the only way to run this setup is if I purchase another standalone license?

BCres, this workflow you mentioned of using the startup command to render using the command line switches is interesting. That method sounds like it might help to save me a lot of time on the this big 1800 frame high resolution animation. I am assuming this still requires the C4D octane plugin license? Even though C4D is not fully launching. Can you get away in this method with just using the octane standalone license?

[nrygpu]

I have setup C4D on a Windows 10 based system that has Quadro GPU's. The Windows "master" computer is running C4D R18 with latest update, Octane C4D plugin 3.06 and standalone 3.06. Next I have a GPU server with 8 GPU's that is running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and also Octane standalone 3.06. I have run the daemon script in Linux and it successfully generates the run_octane_daemon.sh

Next I run the run_octane_daemon.sh and everything seems to be working as it should. However, the problem I am having now is that no matter what I try I can't see the render slave on the master. It simply does not show up in either C4D or octane standalone on the master. As you can see in the screenshot below, it is all running correctly except no slave is detected by the master.

https://www.screencast.com/t/YdEooXxqMxcT

I have spent hours checking the network settings. I made sure I can ping to the private IP of both the Windows master and the Linux slave and vice versa. I also opened up firewall settings to make sure that nothing is blocked. There is no virus software running in this testing environment. This is all running inside of an HPC grade data center with 10Gbps networking between the machines.

I am really stuck here because I need to start rendering this animation, but the only way to get it done is if I can use all 20 GPU's via netrender.

Help is very much appreciated!

[BCres]

nrygpu,

Looking at the picture, my only thought is—you don't run the standalone program on the remote render system, just the daemon. My remote standlone doesn't show anything on the network tab either. That's not how you check.

To check networking, you open the standalone on your main system after you start the daemon on the remote and see if the 8 gpus show up there.

Once it's all setup, you don't even run the standalone on the main system. (unless you are using the orbx file technique.) You simply run the commandline at the desktop as I mentioned earlier and your scene will begin to render. (remember to test it with a few frames, or you can kill the commandline.exe in the taskmanager as well.)

BCres

Two shots show my local machine and remote. Notice how the remote doesn't show any network renderers.

[nrygpu]

Hello,

I have enabled logging and shared the output with bepeg4d via PM.

I really hope you can help me figure out why the slave is not showing up at all in the master octanerender network preferences GUI. As you can see from this screenshot the slave does not show up at all on the master. https://www.screencast.com/t/wu4eqfmte3hI

I have made sure that there is no issue with any firewall blocking anything. Currently all traffic is open between the two computers, they are on the same subnet, same 10Gbps LAN network. I also tested and I can ping both machines from one another to their local IP's.

I am really not sure what else to try.

[nrygpu]

Also here is the logging output from the GPU linux slave computer: http://pastebin.com/bXsYrSYz

Does the master machine also generate logging? If so what is the location of the logged output on a Windows master running C4D octane plugin?

[nrygpu]

Maybe should I try to use 3.05 latest version on the master, plugin, and slave instead of the 3.06 version I am using?

I am now wondering if 3.06 does not support network rendering using Linux based slaves or something like that. I am really at a loss here because I have spent so many hours setting this up and checking everything over and over again.

Also, I am no newbie to network rendering at all. I am the founder of RevUp Render https://www.revuprender.com/ so I have several years of experience with networking rendering using V-Ray, Iray and many others.