License Question

[3dreamstudios]

Since otoy licensing is quite complex IMO please clarify this for me...

I have a stand alone and LW license combo. I use two cards in one machine currently.

I will be adding another machine with 2-4 cards in it. I will want to either use this machine as NETWORK machine at the same time as the first machine or as an alternate NODE in my LWSN rendering.

1. Meaning when I pull up a scene on my main machine I will want the additional cards in the other machine to work on the current frame...
2. Or have my screamernet manager (butterfly net render) manage two computers working on two different frames.

The second option is most certainly licensing I have...meaning I would need LW+Stand Alone combo. But does the first require such licensing as well?

[juanjgon]

To use the Octane native network rendering you don't need an additional plugin license on the render nodes, you only need one additional Standalone license. This feature is limited to 20 GPUs, including the local ones.

But if you want to use LWSN in the render nodes, or you want to have a Layout rendering on these render nodes, you need a full combo license. With only one plugin license, you only can launch the Layout rendering in one machine at the same time.

Hope this helps,
-Juanjo

[3dreamstudios]

To use the Octane native network rendering you don't need an additional plugin license on the render nodes, you only need one additional Standalone license. This feature is limited to 20 GPUs, including the local ones.

But if you want to use LWSN in the render nodes, or you want to have a Layout rendering on these render nodes, you need a full combo license. With only one plugin license, you only can launch the Layout rendering in one machine at the same time.

Hope this helps,
-Juanjo

Thank you for the clarification, that helps. Depending on the scene size...I'm on gigabit network...is it reasonable to use Octane Native Network gpu's for scenes that render fully in say 2-4 mins? Meaning...does it engage the gpu's fairly quickly after transfer of files?

[juanjgon]

While rendering an animated sequence on a large render farm, you are going to get always the best possible performance rendering a frame in each render node (using LWSN, or a Layout rendering on each node). The scene extraction is done locally on each render node for each frame, using the local CPU, and if you have several nodes, the network performance is better, because each node is not going to load the scene data exactly at the same time.

But in your case, with only one render node, and with render times over 2 minutes, probably the performance of the Octane network rendering is going to be near the same, unless you have scene extraction times longer that the 20% of total render time.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[3dreamstudios]

While rendering an animated sequence on a large render farm, you are going to get always the best possible performance rendering a frame in each render node (using LWSN, or a Layout rendering on each node). The scene extraction is done locally on each render node for each frame, using the local CPU, and if you have several nodes, the network performance is better, because each node is not going to load the scene data exactly at the same time.

But in your case, with only one render node, and with render times over 2 minutes, probably the performance of the Octane network rendering is going to be near the same, unless you have scene extraction times longer that the 20% of total render time.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

ok I think that makes sense. typically scenes load within 30 seconds or so for my work. So I'm guessing I would get decent return on using additional gpu's over the network. If money permits additional LWSN render license is ideal..as I can keep the other machine running more often...

Thanks.

[3dreamstudios]

One last question, I think.

If running LWSN on the main machine will I be able to use the other machine as network gpu's on the ONE NODE? Or is the native Octane network render only with Layout rendering?

[juanjgon]

The Octane network rendering is available only from the Layout currently. The LWSN render process is designed to work as a render node and it only can access to the node local GPUs. This doesn't mean that support the network rendering inside LWSN is impossible, but I'll need to think about it to see how it can be configured and executed.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[3dreamstudios]

no problem. Just wanting to make sure I know my options and budget requirements. Thanks for the help!