VRED Cluster

Note

To run the Linux version of VRED, ensure you run Linux with GNU C Library stable release version 2.5 with installed X-Server, as per Autodesk VRED 2016 or 2017 system requirements. Please note the hardware requirements and ensure replacement OpenGL libraries such as MESA are available for headless machines.

VRED Cluster Distributed Rendering

You can submit jobs for VRED Cluster from the Monitor.

Do NOT execute or install the VRED Cluster service executable as a background service (NT service/daemon). Deadline is more flexible here and will spawn the cluster service executable as a child process of the Deadline Worker. This makes our system more flexible and resilient to crashes as when we terminate the VRED Cluster job in the Deadline queue, the Deadline Worker application will ‘cleanly’ tidy up Cluster Service and more importantly, any child processes.

Submission Options

The general Deadline options are explained in the Job Submission documentation.

The VRED Cluster specific options are:

• Cluster Count: The number of tasks/maximum number of Workers to create in the cluster. Default: 1

• Port Number: The port number to be used for the cluster service. The port number needs to be identical on all machines including the workstation machine for VRED to communicate correctly, and must be open in your firewall. Default: 8889.

• VRED Version: The VRED application version to use (7.0=2015, 8.0=2016, 9.0=2017, 9.1=2017.1, 9.2=2017.2, 10.0=2018, 10.1=2018.1, 10.2=2018.2, 11.0=2019, 12.0=2020, 13.0=2021).

Plug-in Configuration

You can configure the VRED Cluster plug-in settings from the Monitor. While in super user mode, select Tools -> Configure Plugins and select the VRED plug-in from the list on the left.

Note, if the executable supports a MAJOR.MINOR.REVISION (9.0.123) numbering system in its path, then you will need to configure the explicit exe path to the particular revision that you have installed on your machines. Deadline does not track every possible revision available or indeed where it might be custom installed to, so a studio should verify their exe paths are correct for each application version they choose to use with Deadline. Multiple exe paths can still be declared and the first one that is found on a particular Worker on a particular platform will be used from the exe list.

Cluster Executables

Here you can specify the executable used for rendering for the different versions of VRED.

Ensure you use the following VRED executable only:

• VRED Cluster Service

  • Windows: VREDClusterService.exe

  • Mac OS X: VREDClusterService

  • Linux: clusterService

Rendering

After you’ve configured and submitted your VRED cluster job it is time to start rendering using your clusters. In VRED, start by enabling raytracing (Only Raytracing renders can be distributed over a cluster), then open up the Cluster Rendering window (Rendering -> Cluster). Set the servers to be the machine names/ip addresses of the machines that picked up the Cluster job, separated by spaces. Set the Port number to be the same as port number specified in the VRED Cluster Job. Modify any other settings you want for your cluster jobs in this UI.

After you have set everything up in the Clusters window, open up the render settings window (Rendering -> Render Settings) and set up your job as if you were rendering normally. Once this is set up enable cluster rendering in the render settings window (Cluster group in the file output tab) and enter the cluster machine names/ip address as you did in the cluster window. Begin your render by pressing the render button in the render settings window.

After you are done all of your renders, complete the VRED cluster job through the Deadline Monitor.

FAQ

Can VRED be run as a service?

VRED can sometimes crash when running as a service. If VRED appears crashed, try running the Worker as a normal application instead of as a service to see if that fixes the problem.

Is Mac OS X supported?

VRED 2016 (06.03.2015) added Mac OS X support so Deadline now supports VRED using this version or newer.

Is VRED supported on Linux?

Yes, only the non-gui application ‘clusterService’ is supported on Linux.

Error Messages and Meanings

This is a collection of known VRED Cluster error messages and their meanings, as well as possible solutions. We want to keep this list as up to date as possible, so if you run into an error message that isn’t listed here, please email Deadline Support and let us know.

Error: FailRenderException : VRED cluster service executable was not found in the semicolon separated list.

If you encounter this error message in Job Report, Deadline is unable to find executable path for VRED Cluster application.

Note that this may mean the specific version is not supported by Deadline officially.

However, you can do the following self-troubleshooting method to render using the current VRED cluster version.

You can add current VREDCluster version in the following files: [Repository]submissionVREDpluginsVREDClusterVREDCluster.param [Repository]submissionVREDpluginsVREDClusterVREDCluster.options

ERROR: ld.so: object ‘../libGL.so.1’ from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

If you encounter this error message in VRED 2017 (9.0 or 9.01) on Linux, then this is a known Linux only issue with Autodesk VRED RenderNode and is fixed in VRED 2017 SP2 (9.02). The full error message might be displayed as follows:

ERROR: ld.so: object '/opt/Vred/VREDCluster-9.01/bin/Linux64/mesa/libGL.so.1' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

Autodesk have provided a downloadable glu.zip file to fix this issue. However, you should also be able to resolve this using your preferred package manager. Our Linux system requirements page also documents how to install MESA for workstations (which you could follow but for your headless rendernodes in this case).

STDOUT: vrEGL: couldn’t find ‘libEGL.so’!

If you are using a headless Linux based rendernode (no physical graphics card installed), you will need to install a replacement for OpenGL such as MESA to avoid the missing OpenGL libraries message as well as ensure X-server is running as per Autodesk VRED 2016 or 2017 system requirements:

>>> sudo -s
>>> yum install redhat-lsb libX11 libXext
>>> yum install mesa-libGL mesa-libGLU