Dear @shikyo13 We have a new version about ready to release, would you be at all interested in testing before it is officially available? I would very much like to see you able to use the addon to render, I think this new version is far more stable. Please reply and let me know if you would like to take us up on this offer :)
Hi @shikyo13 :) Great that you are interested, I'll find a way to get the addon to you.
So, the change log? Good question! The change log usually comes out once the addon is officially released, thats cause we might find bugs now in pre-release testing that we want to fix and they'll get added, but roughly, here's what the new version has over the previous:
- Multiple fixes for blender 2.80 beta compatibility (lots of changes to the blender python api have been supported now)
- Multiple scene support - now you can setup multiple scenes to render and all of them will render with crowdrender on all your connected nodes
- Fixed a bug where the hardware id would fail to be returned on some windows systems causing addon to not start (note this is also a security fix, for which the hardware id's of nodes will now change on our system when using 017. You'll get duplicate machines in your node list, but we'll be purging the system regularly after 017 is released to remove the duplicates)
- Fixed a problem where the local node would not render cached animation data (where the data was stored external to the blend file)
- Fixed a bug where opening a file in blender would cause the addon to 'go nuts' and become unstable
- Fixed a design flaw that sometimes caused nodes that were disabled to render to actually render when they shouldn't and vice versa, similar glitching could occur with individual node tile size settings
- Fixed issues with CUDA and OpenCL cards not being used or recognised, they can all be used now and will show up in each node's settings menu
- Fixed intolerable glitching which occurred after either disconnecting a node or reconnecting to multiple nodes (which was done by pressing "Connect" which connects to all nodes, even ones that are already connected. This was referred to as the "connected: " bug since once it happens the system becomes unstable and nodes would show their status as "connected :" and stop responding requiring a restart.
- Each node now shows an alert symbol if the node is not running the same version of the addon as the client/local node. clicking the alert symbol tells you what version that node is running and what version the client is running, so you can fix it by installing the same version on each node.
Ok, with CUDA, if the render is hanging, can you render locally using the cycles engine using the same scene? The best way to test what could be doing this is to see if you get any errors while rendering without the add-on.
If it turns out that the render works without problems using cycles (no crowd render) then we can do further investigation, starting with seeing all of your logs files. The logs you provided don't actually tell me what the error is, just that there's been an error. Hopefully there will be more information in the bulk of the logs.
You can export all logs to a zip file in Blender > user preferences > addons > crowdrender
Press the "zip logs" button and it will save all logs from the computer you are on to the desktop. Please do this for both the master and the render nodes you had trouble with. So one zip file for each computer you used.
You can e-mail these to info at crowdrender dot com dot au :)
Yes the render completes in 29 seconds consistently using CUDA/Cycles on the local machine. It completes in 35 seconds consistently on the remote PC when just copying the .blend file manually and running a render. This is a wired gigabit LAN connection between PCs. Logs are on the way.
Have you tried just re-opening the file? I've found with complicated projects, I get sync fail at first, but if I re-open the blend file, then it syncs. Let me know if that helps.
I did get sync to work using the Revert method. However I have found render times extremely inconsistent. Initially doing a test at 1080p and 20 samples took 19 seconds with the setup listed below. But sometimes it would take as much as 2 minutes, with ones test going over 11 minutes, all same settings. I have no way of knowing what made it take so much longer on the other tests.
Dear @shikyo13 We have a new version about ready to release, would you be at all interested in testing before it is officially available? I would very much like to see you able to use the addon to render, I think this new version is far more stable. Please reply and let me know if you would like to take us up on this offer :)
Hi Shikyo,
Ok, with CUDA, if the render is hanging, can you render locally using the cycles engine using the same scene? The best way to test what could be doing this is to see if you get any errors while rendering without the add-on.
If it turns out that the render works without problems using cycles (no crowd render) then we can do further investigation, starting with seeing all of your logs files. The logs you provided don't actually tell me what the error is, just that there's been an error. Hopefully there will be more information in the bulk of the logs.
You can export all logs to a zip file in Blender > user preferences > addons > crowdrender
Press the "zip logs" button and it will save all logs from the computer you are on to the desktop. Please do this for both the master and the render nodes you had trouble with. So one zip file for each computer you used.
You can e-mail these to info at crowdrender dot com dot au :)
Hi Shikyo,
Have you tried just re-opening the file? I've found with complicated projects, I get sync fail at first, but if I re-open the blend file, then it syncs. Let me know if that helps.