Hi, I am trying to setup Blender in my renderfarm. When I install Blender on one off my slave computers I cant open Blender. it is asking for a Graphic driver.
These computers are running graphics from motherboard and do not have a graphicscard. Is it possible to use a workarround for this problem?
Also working on one master pc so I log in from the master pc on the network (connect with external desktop).
I did try as a standalone computer (keyboard mouse and screen connected.)
It does not render from command line or just GUI won’t show up? For renderfarm slaves you need command line rendering only, this should(?) work without opengl support. Have you tried rendering from command line?
These computers are running graphics from motherboard and do not have a graphicscard.
The graphics chip is included in the CPU, the motherboard just has the connectors. Figure out which CPU it is (for example by pressing WIN+PAUSE keys) and download the graphics drivers:
Yes, I have seen the article. So i followed a video on youtube. I see what is happening there. This way is very manual.
Here I am not able to set it as a slave so my master can give orders to the slaves.
Maybe I asked the wrong question. I do not really care if i can see what my slaves are doing, as long as i can control it with my main pc.
DO I have to install a version off Blender on the nas server so it can find it as a master?
On the machine you are rendering on. You first have either to set a path variable to the location where blender is located or set your path to that. Ah, don’t know the correct naming but you should be good to go with choosing “run” in your start menu and then typing “cmd” and hit return
You haven’t even gotten Blender to run yet. Start there. Install the graphics driver. If that doesn’t work the only other option to run Blender is to start from the commandline.
Secondly, how is the “farm” supposed to work? Blender has no concept for slave/master built in. There are addons and external programs that handle distributed rendering. You need to follow the instructions for those, respectively. They may or may not require the GUI to work/setup.
Oke, starting up with command line did work. I rendered out a frame without opening the program itself starting up, .exe file doenst work. These slaves do not have a graphics-card, (cpu based system). Everything is up-to-date.
To be fair I did not set-up this system all by myself, I am not that good in IP-address things.
At the moment I am using backburner.
My renderfarm works like this:
1 workstation connectect with a Nas and Switch to the Renderfarm.
The Nas with 2 parts. Y for textures and Z for sending jobs and storing the render images
When using backburner the workstation is:
A monitor
B manager
C server (slave)
From the 3d program it goes through the backburner program which is storing the file on the Z drive on my NAS. When stored, the backburner sends the job to the server-(slave). The slave opens up the job and starts rendering. Note that it is not opening the file. It only starts rendering.
It sends a file from the program to the backburner-monitor, then the file goes to the Z drive on my NAS. From there it sends it out to all the server-(slaves) in the farm.
So for using this system I can use only the Z drive to store and save the renders. The slaves do not have acces to my workstation-drive.
This leads up to the problem which I am facing now:
I can not connect my workstation to the slaves and the slaves do not know that they need to be slaves and where to place these files.
Most render farms work with a logic similar to this:
master computer runs the master renderfarm software,
slave computers run the slave software,
master sends out text based render commands over network, which slaves pick up and try to execute,
render commands are simple command line commands which execute Blender (or any other) software with necessary arguments,
slaves run the commands as they arrive, not giving what these commands actually do, it is not important at all
The whole point is that renderfarm master software constructs command line commands for render jobs based on the settings you set up. Usually each command for blender instructs to render one frame from a sequence and it is up to master to create the appropriate commands and distribute them to slaves. Each slave tries to execute the command it receives and it either succeeds or fails. The command must make sense on slave computer: executable must be reachable (usually set in path env variable), blend file must be reachable (usually on network location) and render result folder must be reachable ( where to save the frames). If all this is set, each slave simply runs the command line command, blender renders and you get your frames.
I can not get it set, the master is not seeing the slave machine. (I have a Job in queue)
Right now i am looking at Flamenco. is this something to go for?
Your first task is to render a frame manually from the command line on a slave node. Which you’ve apparently done. Now you know the blender binary works on that remote node (and probably all the others too).
Your next task is to figure out how to set up your batch queuing software so the master sends out the proper command (which you now know actually works) to your slave nodes. Each queing system has its own quirks. I’m not even sure which program queuing system you’re using, based on your posts.
But the big problem has already been solved. You now know the blender binary works and generates correct output. So it’s time to dig into your batch software docs to figure out how to launch Blender from the command line through your queuing tool on those remote slave hosts.
The NAS issue is a side matter. If all nodes have that drive mounted, blender will see that filesystem too. It’s just a matter of using the correct command line switches and file paths and setting the right environment variables. Once you have that workrapping this all up in a short script will make your life a lot easier.
