how to send Pyro to a render farm
-
Hi Dr. Sassi,
I'm not having good results when sending a file with a pyro simulation to a render farm. For some reason, the pyro renders fine on my machine, but testing it out on a render farm, the pyro does not render. What are steps I need to take? I have read that Alembic doesn't work on volumes. I have cached the pyro simulation as vdb, and I've uploaded all of that to the render farm. I suspect that once in the render farm the file might not be correctly referencing the vdb files. Am I missing any steps?
thanks!
Mike -
Hi Mike,
I'm sure I have not worked with that specific render farm, so there are a lot of variables on both sides, I fear, and I don't have any idea to know what the setup is for all parts included.
Renderfarms are not my field where I would go shopping with, hence my suggestion to check with tech support, chances are the render-farmers have checked in as well, since you got no solution from them so far (I assume, as otherwise you would have the need to explore this field deeper)
https://www.maxon.net/en/support-centerThe VDB format should work, as that is the format internally used.
Here are a few random tips. When it works on your machine, but not elsewhere, the question is, what is not available in the files or on their hardware/software?
Set the save and cache path to a known location inside your project folder (e.g., project/cache/pyro/pyro_####.vdb). Avoid absolute paths, which won't exist on farm machines.
Before you do anything, ask the render-farmer for a checklist or any data on what they need.
Make sure the render farm has the same version running Cinema 4D and Redshift running.File > Save Project with Assets, this should set all parts to relative paths,
use simple naming structures, avoid more than one "." special signs, or gaps (Yes, that should be a problem from the past, but who knows). However, the Save Project with Assets typically collects all files.
If you have a second computer, open the file and check if it renders fine. Use the Redshift Asset Inspector, as well as the Cinema 4D Project Asset Inspector. (I assume the computers are not in a network).Send a short test file to the render farm, check if that works. Perhaps also one set up with the RS Volume Loader, while the Animation is set correctly.
Ask how much VRAM their GPUs have, and whether all in use for your job is the same. Perhaps they can share a render report.
Fingers crossed, it is just a path problem, as you mentioned, if I got that correctly.
My best wishes for your project.
-
P.S.:
No idea if that helps,
Team Render Troubleshooting, take it as Brainstorming
https://help.maxon.net/c4d/2025/en-us/Default.htm#html/1101.html?Highlight=team%20renderRedshift Log files:
https://help.maxon.net/r3d/cinema/en-us/Default.htm#html/Log+Files.html?TocPath=Miscellaneous%2520Topics%257C_____2 -
Thank you Dr. Sassi, for the brainstorming ideas. It turns out that the render farm was not seeing the cached vdbs, and they have to manually go in and fix the c4d file once I uploaded it. They said there's a fix coming for this problem. As always, I appreciate your thoughtful and thorough answer.
Mike
-
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the reply, and you're very welcome.
This is good to know. I can't find an entry for this problem, or perhaps I searched not well enough.
Either way, I'm glad there is awareness and progress.
Have a great weekend.
