Set Up Your Own VRay Render Farm

If you are tired of looking at the screen for long hours waiting for the next pixel to appear, you have the option of building your own render farm. The best thing about building your own render farm is that it is an affordable and fast process. If you intend to render scenes with VRay, you really need to have fast processors. The good news is that advancement in technology has made it possible for you to render your scenes fast. However, before looking at how you can build your own VRay farm, it is essential that you understand what is meant by VRay.

VRay is software that is mostly used by render farms. It is extremely easy to set up and has a built in network rendering option. Before setting up your VRay render farm, there are a number of things that you might need.

- The first thing you will need is to have VRay installed on your computers. Essential to note is that there is no standalone version of VRay, so it has to be installed with Maya or Max among others.

- You will also need a local network of computers with access to each other. It is vital that the computers are all connected and that they are part of the same network. In addition, the connection should not be blocked or interrupted by firewalls.

- It is vital that you have access to a fast network. It is not acceptable for you to have a slow network or wireless connections. It is also not recommended that you use Wi-Fi or data connections. The faster the network, the better you will be able to work.

Once you have gathered all the things you need, you should go ahead and set up your render farm. The first thing you will need to do is set up the VRay render server. The render server can be set up on the slave machines by simply using the Launch VRay DR spawner in your VRay install folder. The path usually differs according to the software on which the VRay is being installed. If you are running Windows 7 or Vista, it is recommended that you get administrator privileges before setting up the farm, otherwise it will not start.

Once your VRay is up and running, the next step is for you to set up the parameters. This has to be done on the master machine, which should be running at high capacity. Look for the Render setup process and you are ready to get started. Once you have already set VRay as your production renderer, all you have to do is switch to the setting tab. While here, look for and check the distributed rendering check-box. Next, click on settings, which is just next to the box.

Overall, setting up your VRay render farm is not a difficult task, especially if you know all the things that you will need. However, after you have set up your farm, you need to make sure that you use it correctly; otherwise you will end up confusing the VRay.

Dave Sheen is an online marketer and author who has been assisting businesses in generating traffic through link building and meta-tagging and boost their search engine ranking. He is a regular contributor in www.foxrenderfarm.com and writes articles on latest gadgets, cloud computing, SEO flicks and several other technology based subjects.