Help with Network Render Slave Machine...

[jayroth]

OK, I have sent a request off to Octane Support. Unless someone can offer some additional options here, I now await their reply...

[aoktar]

Hi,
i'm trying to follow your posts. But hard to understand. I would to help you but this network part is mostly working in Octane core and standalone software. I think Marcus could help for this, but i think he is away for some vacation. I hope someone can help to you from support stuff.

[rappet]

I have relocated my my work to the render slave machine, so at least I can run projects through it now. But that means I bought the extra Octane Standalone license for nothing. I'm not happy about this at all, and I may seek a refund on that license if I can't get this to work soon. I am going to submit a tech support request later today. Hopefully we can resolve the issue in a couple of days, but I won't have as much time to dedicate to a solution as I did up to this point.

Good to hear you can work your project.
You were unlucky having this in the weekend, I guess someone from Otoy will be able to help you get it work properly,
And I bet once you got it working you won't have regrets of the extra licence

[jayroth]

Thanks, guys!

[rappet]

And?

[jayroth]

And... still nuthin' -- Support has been in contact with me, but it is a slog. Hopefully and answer will be had soon. I am getting very close to asking for a refund on my currently useless additional license...

[jayroth]

Ok, after upgrading to version 2.24 of Octane Standalone across the board, and upgrading to the latest C4D plug in, the slave now shows up in the Network Render tab, but does not show up in the available devices tab. Unfortunately, I cannot explicitly confirm that the slave is contributing to the actual render (render, not live view) as the render times are exactly the same, with and without. in the live view, the info display for NetRender does show the slave GPU at 1/1, which is correct for my setup as it is currently. I am still going through validation tests, but clearly something is different than with the previous version of Octane.

It appears that the culprit was a combination of the previous version and Eset Smart Security. I do have to disable Eset to get the GPU seen, but curiously after that point, enabling it then still seems to allow communication, though I could be wrong about that point. I cannot seem to find an obvious way for Eset to allow the octane slave/daemon to work, and that is very frustrating. If anyone has any tips in that regard, I would appreciate seeing them.

The slave GPU is a GTX980M running on an Asus gaming laptop. In my benchmark tests, it is roughly half the speed of one GTX980Ti card, so I would expect some sort of render time improvement to be seen when I use it via network rendering. That said, it could be that there is some sort of offset between the additional slave GPU and the additional time it takes to transport the information to the slave for network rendering, but it is highly unlikely that render times would be identical. Unfortunately, Cinema does not report any more timing detail than seconds, unless there is some sort of preference or option somewhere that I am unaware of. Right now, given all of the trouble that I have gone through (and the great help from the tech support people at OTOY), it just doesn't really seem to be worth it. Of course, this assumes that the slave is actually being used for the final render, and I am suspicious that it is not, given the render times being equal with and without. This situation may very well force me to build yet another render box... sometime far, far down the road...

[jayroth]

Well, I just received a rather distressing email from OTOY support stating that the native network rendering solution is not supported for the C4D Octane plug-in. In other words, if you wish to use network render slaves from within the Cinema 4D application, you must not only purchase a full standalone license for the slave machine (known and understood) but you must also purchase an additional C4D Octane plug in license, and render to the network via Team Render. This was not my understanding at all, and given posts by Aoktar, I think it may not be his understanding either.

I'm not looking to stir things up here, I just want some clarity about what the situation really is and requires. Frankly, having to purchase both licenses for every slave machine seems excessive, as most here who seem to do network rendering do not seem to require additional plug in licenses from my read. But hey, I guess I could be wrong.

Oddly, as my previous post indicates, I sort of have all of this working now, which I reported to OTOY support before I posted here. Given my results, the email was not only distressing, but confusing as well. Anyone care to offer their thoughts?

[aoktar]

Well, I just received a rather distressing email from OTOY support stating that the native network rendering solution is not supported for the C4D Octane plug-in. In other words, if you wish to use network render slaves from within the Cinema 4D application, you must not only purchase a full standalone license for the slave machine (known and understood) but you must also purchase an additional C4D Octane plug in license, and render to the network via Team Render. This was not my understanding at all, and given posts by Aoktar, I think it may not be his understanding either.

I'm not looking to stir things up here, I just want some clarity about what the situation really is and requires. Frankly, having to purchase both licenses for every slave machine seems excessive, as most here who seem to do network rendering do not seem to require additional plug in licenses from my read. But hey, I guess I could be wrong.

Oddly, as my previous post indicates, I sort of have all of this working now, which I reported to OTOY support before I posted here. Given my results, the email was not only distressing, but confusing as well. Anyone care to offer their thoughts?

That's not a new topic. I have several times explained. You have to run another copy of plugin in other C4D. There is not any different which is TR client or C4D. In TR, C4D sends the scene to clients and needs a plugin to convert C4D scene to Octane. Teorically there is not any different for plugin. I had to do a version for clients but there is not any render farm license also. This is fundamental problem of licensing system.

So, cheaper solution is to use Octane's network rendering. It just needs a extra standalone license. Meanwhile, i don't decide the licensing system.

[jayroth]

Right, and that is what I have done: I purchased a standalone license for my slave machine, and my intention is to use the C4D Octane plug in on my master machine, and network render over to the slave machine with its own standalone license. That is my understanding of how it is supposed to work.