final gather render over network?

[anthony113]

i need to do a final gather render of a pretty large scene. i've read a bit about mental ray having problems with final gather distributed renders, especially flickering problems. i was wondering if anyone has any experience with this or solutions. thanks!

[stafford]

You should render only FG on one machine (every 3rd, 4th, etc frame depend on your scene) and save FG, then render the final images on network.

[anthony113]

hm... i don't quite understand. can you elaborate further please?

[stafford]

hm... i don't quite understand. can you elaborate further please?

First render only the FG on a single machine (mentalrayGlobals -> Render Mode -> Render Final Gather Maps). Depend on your scene you can redner only every 2nd, 3rd, 4th frame.

After FG render change the Render Mode to Full Render and in Render Settings add the prerendered FG map file under the FG settings.

Now you can send the scene to the renderfarm...

Unfortunatelly FG maps can`t be rendered over network because the rendernodes can`t write to the file simultaneously.

regards,

stafford

[anthony113]

so essentially you're having one machine calculate the final gather and then letting all the machines use that map in their renders? Also do I have to set Rebuild to freeze or anything like that or can I just leave it on?

[stafford]

so essentially you're having one machine calculate the final gather and then letting all the machines use that map in their renders? Also do I have to set Rebuild to freeze or anything like that or can I just leave it on?

You should set the Rebuild to OFF.

[anthony113]

ok cool. where is mentalrayGlobals exactly? i can't seem to find it