prosckes

HI, Where can I download the SimCloth plugin? Thanks, Paul

Hi Tomas, All these machines are running 64-bit Windows Server, so using Camera 64 (which I am) shouldn't be a problem, correct? Also, the project that I'm using for testing is very typical for the type of work I do. Testing a smaller project doesn't make sense for me, if I'm going to end up running into memory issues when I try to render a real job. Also, all of this testing is costing me money (over $5 per hour), so I really don't want to do much more unless there's going to be a real benefit to the work I do, or the EIAS community as a whole (I wonder how many are actually attempting to use 32-core machines for rendering?) I just want to understand why a 32-core machine would equal to, or slower than, an 8 or 16-core machine. Especially, given that all of these machine have the same amount of ram for each processor. I don't expect the render times to scale linearly. But, I would hope that the 32-core machine would be faster than the 16-core, and at least twice as fast as the 8-core. Also, I haven't looked closely at the actually processors and the speed they are running at in GHz. It's always possible that Amazon's 8-core machines are newer/faster than the others. If any other EIAS users have experience with optimizing a Windows render farm, please feel free to add to the discussion. Thanks, Paul

Hi Tomas, Sorry, it looks like the scene needed more than 2GB per core (although, I don't know why the 8-core managed to finish it's frame). Here are the results: 32-bit Optimized 8-core/15GB 5:45 16-core/30GB out of memory error 32-core/60GB out of memory error 64-bit Optimized 8-core/15GB 6:02 average 16-core/30GB 4:32 average 32-core/60GB 6:12 average So, it looks like the 16-core machine is the fastest. But, the 8-core is still the best value considering the cost: 8-core costs $0.75/hr 16-core costs $1.50/hr 32-core costs $3.00/hr Hope this helps! -Paul

A few weeks ago I finally got Renderama to work on Amazon EC2 servers. The problem was the default "Security Group" would not allow any incoming network traffic. Once I setup my own Security Group everything worked just fine. Now, my problem is with render times not scaling with more processor cores. I've tested 8, 16 and 32 core servers. But, I've found that the 16 core machines are only about 25% faster than the 8 core machines. And the 32 core machines are actually slower than the ones with 8 cores. I'm definitely not maxed out on memory on any of the servers (they come with 15GB, 30GB, and 60GB respectively), so I don't thing that's an issue. And I'm optimizing the Camera settings to take advantage of all the cores. Is this common for render times to not scale linearly with more processors? If yes, then I'm better off just launching more 8 core machines because they're much cheaper to run by the hour versus the 16 or 32 core machines. If anyone has any advice about optimizing render slaves under Windows, I love to hear your recommendations. Thanks, Paul

Thanks again. I'll keep trying, but I'm pretty busy on a freelance (non-3D) job right now, so it will be a few days before I can really focus on the problem. I'll check back in with my progress sometime next week. -Paul

I'm controlling the EC2 instance via the Microsoft Remote Desktop app running on a Mac (I don't know anything about a "script" to launch the RDC client). Also, I'm running Renderama 9.1 on the same Mac. I've used Renderama on a Mac with a Windows slave on a private network and never had a problem, so maybe that's part of the issue. Also, the only options I have for my EC2 slave machines are: Windows Server 2012 Base Windows Server 2008 R2 Base Windows Server 2008 Base (and a bunch of SQL variants) It's good to know about the IP address. I assumed that the Renderama Slave (Private IP address) was correct, so I changed it to the correct Public IP address, but still no luck. The status always says "waiting" and does not change. Eventually, Renderama on the Mac will timeout with a network error. This is so frustrating, but I really want it to work. I'll keep trying, but at some point, I'll just give up and buy some nice reliable hardware! Thanks for all your help, I really appreciate it! -Paul

OK, so I got Renderama launching fine on and EC2 server. And I've turned off the windows firewall. But, when I send a Renderama job, I immediately get a network error. Is there any other network setup that needs to be done to get this to work, like port forwarding or setting up a VPN? Or should it just work right away? Also, I'm using Windows Server 2012. Is this OK, or should I be using Windows Server 2008 in 64 bit mode? Thanks in advance! -Paul

Hi, I tried installing those, and I'm still getting the same error. I'm attempting to install render slaves on Amazon EC2 cloud servers running Windows. I also see the same error when attempting to launch a render slave on a virtual Windows machines running inside VMware Fusion on a Mac Pro. Has anyone successfully used a cloud service like Amazon EC2 as a scalable render farm? Seems like it should work if I can just get past this "MSVCR110.dll is missing" problem. Thanks, Paul

Thanks! I'll give it a try. -Paul

I'm trying to install EIAS3D on a Windows computer in order to use it as a Renderama Slave. But when I launch the Slave, I get the follow error: "The program can't start because MSVCR110.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem." What do I need to do to resolve this issue? Thanks, Paul