The OctaneRender Network Render feature is designed to add the GPUs of the machines in your LAN to the primary Workstation via Ethernet in both Live View / IPR, and Picture Viewer/Render Queue final render, with animated and static scenes. You can use its power in every phase of the scene preparation, resulting in a faster workflow.
The secondary machine will run the Render-Node in daemon mode, while your first machine with the Enterprise license will be the Workstation, and you can add or remove the Render-Nodes from the rendering on the fly. Max 200x GPUs internal and external, depending on the network interface speed.
You can find the Render-Node installer by visiting your personal Downloads area:
https://render.otoy.com/
You need to select the Render-Node type from the Select Software drop-down menu:
Note that you need to download and install the corresponding Render-Node version to the version used in the primary Workstation. For example, v2021.1.5 license needs to be installed alongside the v2021.1.5 render node license.
During installation, please press the ENTER key several times until the process is completed, to install in the default mode.
We suggest a minimum of 1Gbit Ethernet connection between Workstation and Render-Nodes, with our recommendation to have 10Gbit or more, for complex/huge scenes.
After installation, please ensure you have enabled the Private Connections in Windows Firewall, for both Standalone and C4D in the Workstation, Standalone, and daemon in the Render-Node:
Please, also note that there are two ways of using Network rendering with c4doctane plugin.
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If you connect the render nodes only through Render Settings/Octanerender Main tab, the render nodes are disconnected at the end of each task. This is useful when you have more than one Workstation using the same Render-Nodes at different times.
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If you first connect the Render-Nodes through the Live View menu Options/Network Rendering/Settings panel, and then enable the Network option in Render settings/.. after, the Workstation will establish a preferred connection with the Render-Nodes, that are reconnected automatically at every c4doctane restart.
To recap, the Network settings in Render Settings are referring to the specific scene, while the Network settings in Live View are referring to plugin in general.
You can check the status of the connected Render-Node machines in both Live View and Picture Viewer infobar.
In the Live View (seen above), you can view the number of active GPUs, in relation with the number of available GPUs, plus the number of currently connected Render Nodes. The example shows four GPUs rendering of the four available net GPUs, from two Render Nodes.