How to use mental ray distributed bucket rendering

Issue

You have a high resolution image that takes a long time to render on a single workstation using the mental ray renderer (more than 15-20 minutes). You would like to know how to use mental ray distributed bucket rendering to allow other computers to assist with the rendering process.

Solution

You can use distributed bucket rendering (DBR) to increase your rendering speed when using the mental ray renderer. DBR allows you use up to eight physical CPUs as slaves to assist with rendering an image, in addition to the processors on the master 3ds Max workstation.

Important! To use distributed bucket rendering, you must set up host systems that are capable of running the mental ray renderer. There are two ways to do this 1) set up satellite systems or 2) install mental ray standalone licensing on remote hosts. This procedure demonstrates how to multiply the number of CPUs used for rendering without having to purchase mental ray standalone licenses, using the 3ds Max satellite technology (option 1).

Note: Contour shading does not work with distributed bucket rendering. Also, you cannot use distributed bucket rendering when you render to texture.

Requirements:
-3ds Max must be installed on all of the computers involved.
-3ds Max must be licensed on the master workstation. (You do not need to license 3ds Max on the satellite host systems.)
-This technique is best used for rendering a single high resolution image that takes longer than 15 minutes to render on a single workstation.

Setup:

1. Choose which machines will serve as satellites and write down each machine's IP address.
2. On the master 3ds Max workstation, open Render Setup.
3. Click on the Common tab, go to the Assign Renderer rollout and choose mental ray Renderer for Production.
   
4. Click on the Processing tab, go to the Distributed Bucket Rendering rollout and check the Distributed Render option.
   Optional: If the satellite host systems have maps installed on them, with exactly the same file names and path names as on your local host, turn on Distributed Maps. (With Distributed Maps turned on, remote renderers can use their local copy of maps, which saves time.)
   
5. In the area below, click on Add to add additional DBR hosts. 
6. In the the Add/Edit DBR host windows, enter the IP address of one of the machines that you plan to use as a satellite hosts.
7. Repeat steps 5 & 6 until you have added all of your satellites. (You can add up to eight physical CPUs. So you could add 8 single core machines, 4 dual-CPU machines, 8 quad core machines, etc.)
   
8. Click to select the names of those satellites you want to use for DBR. (You can click All to select all the host names in the list.)
9. Go to the Translator Options rollout and check the options for Use Placeholder Objects and Use mental ray Map Manager. (When placeholder objects are enabled, geometry is sent to the renderer only on demand.)
   
10. Click on the Renderer tab and go to the Sampling Quality rollout and make sure the Bucket Order is set to Hilbert. (With Hilbert order, the sequence of buckets to render uses the fewest number of data transfers.)
    

The setup is now complete. You now have one master 3ds Max workstation and up to eight CPUs acting as satellite slaves. You will notice when you render that the total number of buckets appearing in the virtual frame buffer has increased due to the satellite slaves that have been added through DBR.