The KB article is correct. It says you need to copy the shaders to the slave machines. But it does not work with shaders installed in a workgroup, no matter whats in the the setenv file.
Here is why I think it cannot work: When you install the service for satellite rendering (earlier versions of XSI did it within the main installation, in later version we needed to install it manually), the raysat process is running with a local system account. To my knowledge this was always the case, even before the AD era. A process using the system account can't access network shares. This is a windows design thing. And it is for a good reason, because the system account does not have a password associated and has higher privileges than even the administrator account. Allowing a process with system privileges to access network shares would introduce severe security issues, so it's disabled by design. This is the only problem that prevents the slave machines to access the network path, where the shaders are installed. To make it work we need to run the raysat process under a different account, for example the admin or user account. In my case I used the RR account that has all the necessery permissions on the network already. The raysat.exe inherits its account settings from the service that started it. Usually the "RaySatsi2015_3_12_1_12Server" service (or whatever you called it when installed manually). Therefore we need to modify this service instead of the raysat.exe directly. Go to the service properties and change the Log On type from "Local system account" to "This account". Enter user name and password and restart the service. Do this on every slave machine. Basically that’s it. The strange thing is, I didn't find that documented anywhere. I read lots of question about distributed tile rendering in max, maya and xsi when it comes to 3rd party shaders. I researched high and low and it seems to me that it's basically not known. For example, if you are using satellite rendering with xsibatch on a farm (very unlikely, but I do it), you'll never encounter this problem, simply because the xsibatch process (which is not using the system account) is starting the raysat service. The real interesting part is, that this may also adress a general problem with satellite rendering beeing flakey inside XSI even when not using custom shaders. I'm not sure about this yet and that’s why I need to test more. In the last few days I tried very hard to crash mental ray satellite in XSI and it seems to be much more stable than ever before :) And I did things like plugging in/ out shader nodes while rendering. Deleted objects and even the active pass while rendering. I basically left the region open for hours (set to interactive update) and did all sorts of things. Again, maybe that’s just coincidence. The scenes weren't complicated so it surely needs more testing with complex scenes. BTW This solution definitely fixes a crash when using irradiance particles with satellite rendering: Create a simple scene. Render with IP. In the IP tab, uncheck "Rebuild Map"and rerender. MR will crash. I suspect this is because the IP map is read by slaves through windows networking and therefore it crashes for the same reason. Unlike an FG, GI or PH map that is piped to the slaves through MR directly. If this really will fix the problems with satellite rendering I had all over the years, I will jumping in joy :) A bit ironically, now when XSI got EOL'd and the remaining users most likely do not use MR very much. Sven From: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] [ <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Blair Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2017 1:18 PM To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list Subject: Re: custom shaders and MR satellite rendering Years ago it worked for me, that's why I wrote that kb article. On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Sven Constable <[email protected]> wrote: I'm pretty sure that will not work. :) Apologies for being cryptic here, Stephen. I need to test more. Can someone confirm that he was able to use custom shaders (installed in a workgroup) with satellite rendering at all? TIA, Sven From: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] [mailto: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Blair Sent: Friday, March 10, 2017 10:05 PM To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list Subject: Re: custom shaders and MR satellite rendering Yeah, that's possible. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Setting-up-workgroups-for-satellite-rendering.html It's been awhile, but I think you have to use setenv.bat to set up the workgroups. On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 3:49 PM, Sven Constable <[email protected]> wrote: Hey list, I wonder if anyone got 3rd party shaders like the BA shaders for example to work with satellite rendering in MR? If you install them in a workgroup, it works as expected but unfortunatly not when using satellite rendering. I'd like to have them in a workgroup but not installed on every render node manually. Is this possible? Thanks, Sven ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to [email protected] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm. ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to [email protected] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.
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